Directly under the light fixture, Caesar saw a neatly swept heap of orange and banana peels and a fallen broom. Then he became aware of soft grunting from the darkest corner at the end of the bed-row, out of reach of the light. Silently, he darted across to the edge of the left bay. He could just make out a group gathered in the corner beyond the sleepers. He believed he recognized Aldo, squatting in a semicircle of his fellow gorillas. Then he separated distinct voices from the almost continuous grantings. It was a meeting—a group council of those who did not care to, or could not, sleep.
Drawing in a long breath, Caesar took eight swift paces into the bay. He stepped over the broom and halted by the litter, directly under the glowing fixture. It haloed his head with an eerie radiance.
“Aldo,” he said.
He did not speak loudly. He remained motionless as the grunting suddenly stopped. Massive heads turned. Great eyes glinted from the darkness. On a nearby pallet, a gorilla wakened. He saw Caesar, and went crawling to the head of his mattress, whimpering in fear.
“Aldo,” Caesar repeated, quietly, gently. “I am speaking to you. Come here.”
From the huddled group crouching in the darkness there came snufflings, snortings of fright. Caesar raised a hand, palm up. “There is nothing to fear. Come.”
Caesar was not sure that his entire meaning would be communicated to the gorilla. But the sense of it was. Aldo rose, huge shoulders hunching. He shambled forward keeping his head averted as if he dared not look on the splendid, upright animal who had spoken in the human tongue—the ape whose head was bathed in glow from the ceiling.
Aldo stopped within a pace of Caesar, who slowly turned his hand over and laid it reassuringly on the gorilla’s shoulder. “Aldo,” he said, “I cannot stay with you long. But there are things that you and I and our fellow creatures must begin to do. I will show you. I will help and teach you. We will teach others. And then we will no longer be treated with cruelty. We will no longer be slaves, Aldo—watch . . .” Bending down, Caesar snatched up the broom, holding it aloft under the light so that it was clearly visible to the waking apes along the bed row, and to Aldo’s cronies emerging ever so slowly from the back corner. With a savage grimace, Caesar brought the broom’s handle down across his lifted knee and snapped it in half. Then he handed one of the pieces to Aldo.
Without even a “Do!” command, the gorilla peeled his lips back in pleasure and imitated Caesar perfectly. He lifted his leg and cracked the half of the broom handle in half again. Then he stamped both halves beneath his feet with obvious pleasure.
Again Caesar laid his hand on the gorilla’s shoulder. He let pride and admiration shine from his eyes as he said, “Good. We understand one another, even if every word I speak is not familiar to you. I must go back before I am missed—” He hardly paused for breath, realizing that the act of speech, in itself, has a transfixing effect upon the gorillas now shuffling forward to crowd around him. “—but I will come again. And we will begin to repay the human beings for the way they treat us. Wait for me.” And with a last gentle squeeze of the gorilla’s shoulder, Caesar turned and walked from the bay. With cold, vicious pleasure, he knew now that what he had in mind could succeed.
After he had taken a few steps, noises in the bay caused Caesar to turn and glance back. He saw gorillas grabbing bits of the broom, using their teeth and hands to break them wrathfully into ever-smaller fragments.
ELEVEN
In Señor Armando’s tiny traveling troupe, Caesar had been the sole ape, so he’d had no prior opportunity to learn whether the grunts, barks and other sounds uttered by gorillas, orangutans, or chimpanzees constituted a formalized series of meanings for primitive communication. Now he knew—and his mastery of communication on this primitive level developed rapidly during the week he spent in the Command Post, on duty from morning till midnight.
At twelve every night, a human steward, an ill-tempered young man with a skin problem, arrived with a leash to fetch Caesar home to a more comfortable, but nevertheless barred, sleeping area near the pantry in Governor Breck’s penthouse. Still, throughout the week, Caesar had many chances to study problems of communicating with Aldo and his simian comrades. A surreptitious visit to the sleeping bays late at night—a moment stolen when the staff supervisors were occupied elsewhere—during these and other encounters, Caesar discovered that a combination of the spoken word, various grunts, barks, and chuckling noises, plus hand and visual signals, could make his wishes—and his will—known to his fellow creatures. The apes, in fact, were much more intelligent than their masters gave them credit for being. That also played to Caesar’s evolving strategy.
Buoyed by rising confidence, he was eager to be taken off Command Post duty and put on more routine chores in Breck’s household. That would give him liberty to circulate in the city.
On the Monday following Armando’s death Caesar was allowed to sleep a bit later than usual. After the steward opened the cage to kick him awake, he was required to mop the gleaming inlays of the kitchen floor. Then the steward presented him with a hamper and one of those red shopping cards he’d noticed in the hands of other servant apes.
“Let’s see whether you’re as smart as that MacDonald says you are,” the steward sneered, scratching at his cheek-blemishes. “You miss anything on that list, or come back with one wrong item—” He gleefully pantomimed giving Caesar a beating, then pointed. “Go.”
The steward left the kitchen by another door. Caesar paused only long enough to snatch a pen from the counter and hide it in the pocket of his elegant green jacket.
His route took him into the bustling main plaza where he had first arrived with Señor Armando. He slouched as he walked, moving slowly enough so that he could scan his surroundings and search for opportunities to begin implementing his plans.
One opportunity presented itself as he passed the outdoor cafe. He saw the same group of women chattering over prelunch cocktails. He paused by the curtained railing separating the tables from the plaza proper, and pretended to study his red shopping card. Actually, he was watching the gorilla waiter hovering behind the ladies.
One woman pulled a pale green cigarette from her perspex case and placed it between her lips. Automatically, the waiter reached into his pocket. Then his glance locked with Caesar’s.
Caesar blinked and uttered two almost imperceptible grunts. Slowly the waiter removed his hand from the edge of his pocket.
The lady with the cigarette said plaintively, “Frank—!”
The waiter did not move. With a tolerant smile, the lady leaned over and tapped the pocket containing Frank’s lighter. He pulled the lighter out and threw it on the table.
All conversation stopped. The other ladies raised startled eyebrows. The woman with the green cigarette said softly, “No!”
Still peering at Frank over the edge of his shopping card, Caesar flashed a message with his eyes. And although there was the start of a ripple of fear across the gorilla’s shoulders, Frank did not cringe. He turned his back and walked into the cafe.
At the table there was consternation. “Mr. Lee!” one of the ladies cried. The Oriental proprietor popped into sight. “I’m afraid your Frank definitely needs reconditioning—” She picked up the discarded lighter and started to explain. Caesar glided away into the crowd, pleased.