Dashing sweat from his eyes, MacDonald triggered the opening of the kiosk door, speaking his thoughts aloud. “I wish to God I knew what this was all about. I wish there were some way we could communicate, so you’d understand I don’t want to hand you over—”
The chimpanzee said, “But I do understand, Mr. MacDonald.”
Thunderstruck, MacDonald could only goggle.
The chimpanzee seemed to grow in stature, cast off his slouching posture. He stood nearly upright, looking incredibly human. His eyes darted right, left. A man and woman, arms linked, passed the kiosk. Caesar remained silent until the couple had moved out of earshot. Then he said, “You see, I am the one they’re looking for.”
Still stunned, MacDonald gasped out, “I—I thought about the possibility. Even tonight it crossed my mind. But—I never could bring myself to believe it. I thought you really were a myth.”
The chimpanzee’s face changed, grew ugly. “Now you discover I’m not. But I’ll tell you something that is a myth, Mr. MacDonald. The belief that human beings are kind.”
MacDonald swallowed hard, bolted from the kiosk, nervously surveyed the terrace. “We’ve got to walk—they’re coming for you—”
“Agents of the governor?” Caesar asked as he resumed his shambling posture at the black man’s side. Not sure where he was actually going, MacDonald headed for an up escalator.
“Yes,” he said, “a couple of inspectors from State Security. Somehow they must have found out—”
He clamped his lips shut as a policeman approached. The man gave the black and the chimpanzee a close stare, then recognized MacDonald and touched his helmet respectfully. MacDonald hurried Caesar toward the foot of the escalator, led him around behind it.
Beneath the slanted stair, and screened from the terrace proper by artificial shrubbery, stood a humans-only bench. MacDonald dropped onto it, shaking with tension. “Caesar, what you say about human beings isn’t true,” he gasped. “There are some—”
“A handful!” the chimpanzee snarled, jutting his head forward, his eyes baleful. “But not most of them. And they are the ones who rule. They won’t be humane until we force them to it. We can’t do that until we’re free.”
Still not quite believing that the conversation was taking place, MacDonald whipped up his watch. Barely five minutes left. “And—just how do you propose to gain your freedom with Breck repressing the apes harder and harder?”
“By the only means left to us,” Caesar answered. “Rebellion.”
It was not hard for MacDonald to comprehend the chimpanzee’s vision. Like Breck, he was a believer—now that he had heard the ape speak. And he did understand historical inevitability.
The ape’s eyes burned with a passion that was frightening. MacDonald recalled the mounting incidence of ape insubordination; Caesar’s apparent docility as a servant. Had the ape been tricking them? Pretending to obey while using the cover to forment . . .
The press of time jerked MacDonald back to reality.
“Don’t do it. If you claim intelligence, you’ve got to realize that any try at rebellion is doomed to failure.”
Caesar’s shrug was quick and indifferent. “Perhaps. This time.”
“And the next.”
“Maybe.”
MacDonald felt chilled then. “God help us, you mean to keep trying, don’t you?”
“There won’t be freedom until there is power, Mr. MacDonald. And how else can we achieve that power?” After a pause, the chimpanzee added, “You have been kind. You are one of the very few. In—what must come, I would hope to see you spared.”
“Spared—!” MacDonald roared, grabbing Caesar’s jacket with both hands. The shackles fell from his shoulder. MacDonald jumped at the sudden sound. Caesar smiled.
MacDonald darted a glance across the screen of artificial shrubbery. If they’d been overhead . . .
But the terrace was still empty.
“I should have you killed!” he exploded.
“The way my mother and father were killed?” Caesar asked quietly.
MacDonald looked deep into the glowing eyes, remembering what had been done to Cornelius and to Zira. Despite the personal risks, and the awareness of the harm he might do, his decision, finally, was the only one he could make.
He said, “Go.”
Now it was Caesar’s turn for astonishment. “What?”
“Go on, get out of here. Get away before I change my mind!” MacDonald stabbed a finger toward the mouth of a passageway in the nearby wall. “Go that way, to the next escalator. Try to get down into the service tunnels. Maybe you’ll be safe. Go—” He shoved Caesar, hard.
The chimpanzee did not hesitate. With a last, piercing glance, he spun, ran to the mouth of the passageway, and vanished.
MacDonald pulled out a linen handkerchief and wiped his face. Then he put the handkerchief away, picked up the shackles, and tried to compose himself as he left the secluded area and stepped onto the escalator that carried him upward. The act was done. Right or wrong, it was done. Now he must protect himself as best he could.
The hands of his watch showed him to be a minute late for the rendezvous already. It took him four more minutes to cross another arched bridge on the third level and reach the more crowded Mall of the Nations. There, standing in a tight group away from people queued up for a solido theatre, he spotted Kolp, Hoskyns, and two state security policemen. Kolp charged toward him.
“You’re late, MacDonald. Where’s the ape?”
Trying to sound appropriately worried, he held up the shackles. “I don’t know. I told the governor I’d dispatched him on an errand, and I’ve been searching between here and the police substation where I sent him. I can’t locate him.”
Hoskyns grabbed MacDonald’s arm. “You let him walk out of the Command Post—?”
MacDonald flung off the hand. “I do it all the time!” Kolp said, “Did you ask the substation if they’d seen him?”
“Not yet. I was sure I’d find the chimp wandering somewhere between there and Civic Center, but—”
Kolp’s normally bland face convulsed with rage. “You bungling idiot.”
He dashed toward the nearest phone kiosk. MacDonald closed his trembling hand tighter around the shackles. The piped music played merrily, while people in the solido queue stared.
About half an hour had passed since MacDonald had let him go free. But instead of taking MacDonald’s suggestion about sanctuary in the service tunnels, Caesar had found his way back toward the large plaza.
Certain realities had dictated that he do so. Most important was the fact that full-scale pursuit would very likely be launched soon, and he needed to communicate with his growing network of co-conspirators, in case he was caught or forced to hide for any length of time.
He slipped down a dark passage and into the third and last doorway. The same female cleaning attendant was on duty. She jumped up the moment she recognized him. He ran past her to the last cubicle and stepped inside. He had begun the stockpile with one container of kerosene. Now he counted fourteen. He whipped the lid from the refuse container. It was almost completely full of weapons—everything from steak knives and butcher’s carvers and the cleaver to a number of hand pistols and boxes of ammunition.
With a grunt of satisfaction, he slammed the lid down and sped up the aisle. He astonished the female attendant by hunkering down and gesturing her to his side.
From under the row of cheap basins, he scooped an accumulation of dust and sweepings. He smoothed the debris around and around on the floor. Finally, he had spread it sufficiently so that, by dampening his finger at the bowl, he could trace discernible patterns.