“But we don’t do that—to humans,” MacDonald shot back.
Inspector Kolp studied his fingernails, then removed his glasses and began to polish them. At the console, Dr. Chamberlain was whispering with the operator. The operator’s hand slid out to within inches of the switch used to send current through the table pedestal to the electrodes.
MacDonald wiped his lips. Like Breck, he leaned forward across the rail. Caesar could see his distraught eyes directly across the operator’s outstretched hand. The time for pretense was gone. He stared at the black man with open pleading.
MacDonald looked away.
“You’ve programmed in the special instruction?” Breck asked. Chamberlain nodded. “Then let’s get on with it.”
A signal from Chamberlain. The operator threw the switch over, and simultaneously the giant ceiling speaker boomed: “Talk.”
The thunder of the word seemed to carry pain, hideous pain that beat through Caesar’s body, making him arch and twist on the table. He bit the inside of his mouth to hold back a cry, lashed his head from side to side.
One of the attendants seized his head, forced it back down. The operator returned the switch to its original position.
The pain stopped.
Caesar panted. A vile sourness rose in his throat. Dr. Chamberlain pointed to the console.
“Up one third.”
The operator’s hand darted out, twisted the knob. Over went the switch . . .
“Talk.”
This time the pain—and the convulsions—were far worse. Caesar bit the inside of his mouth till it bled, forcing himself to ride out the searing, shattering hurt that made the small of his back rise and fall in spasmodic agony. Imploringly, he sought MacDonald’s face with pain-blurred eyes.
Was the black man clutching the rail in helpless anger? Caesar couldn’t be sure. The faces, the lights wavered, elongated, grew distorted under the impact of the pain . . .
The operator returned the switch to off.
Dr. Chamberlain scowled. Governor Breck hunched at the rail in a kind of wild anticipation: “More, goddam it. I want to hear him speak!”
Chamberlain himself reached forward, turned up the power again. The switch went all the way over, clack.
“TALK!”
Caesar’s back arched as high as the restraints would permit, slammed down. This time, he could not keep silent. Blood trickling from the corners of his mouth, eyes huge and glazed, he uttered a long, loud animal cry that tore up from his very gut. Frantically, his head beat from side to side . . .
“I want to hear him speak, not just yell!” Breck said.
Perspiring, Dr. Chamberlain leaned over, spun the knob all the way up. The cry from Caesar’s thrashing head became a bestial roar as the speaker thundered:
“TALK!”
He was going to die. Because all his hatred of his tormentors, all his determination, was as nothing against that electronic torrent of pain.
The operator’s fist had gone white on the switch. He stared at the screaming, bellowing animal with a kind of sick fascination. Even Breck turned a little pale beneath his tan.
Dr. Chamberlain shoved the operator aside impatiently, seized the switch and threw it to the off position.
Before Caesar could quite comprehend that the pain had stopped, Chamberlain slammed the lever forward again—"TALK!”—then back, then forward—“TALK!”—and again, and again, faster and faster . . .
“TALKTALKTALKTALK—”
His spine thrashing wildly, his reserves of strength all but gone, Caesar summoned will enough to try one last, desperate signal—a focusing of his eyes on Chamberlain’s frantic hand slamming the switch back and forth; then a pain-tormented look straight at MacDonald.
“Have pity—!”
The nearly maniacal Chamberlain continued slamming the switch on and off. Only Kolp’s hand on his arm checked him. Kolp was smiling. Breck was on his feet, ramming a fist into his palm, elated.
Slowly the reverberations of Caesar’s scream died. He felt his mind sliding into limbo, his eyes closing. He thought he saw MacDonald give a sharp little nod to signify he’d understood Caesar’s glance. He thought he saw that. But in his agony, there was no way to be certain.
And he had no strength left to look again.
He lay with his eyes closed, little threads of blood running down from the corners of his mouth, the convulsions slowly working themselves out of his tortured body. With a last soft thump, his back came to rest on the padding.
MacDonald had indeed caught the message in Caesar’s pain-wracked eyes. The glance at the flying switch—then the howling of those two human words—was not coincidence.
Like Governor Jason Breck, MacDonald was on his feet now. But MacDonald gripped the amphitheatre rail to control his emotions—while Breck gave vent to his.
“There’s our proof! My God, it’s incredible, but—we had to know.” He spun to his assistant. “You’ve no more doubts about who he is, do you, Mr. MacDonald?”
Trying to look queasy—it wasn’t difficult—MacDonald shook his head. “Is it necessary that I sit through any more of this, Mr. Governor?”
Inspector Kolp glanced up at him, contemptuous. “No stomach for seeing justice done, Mr. MacDonald?”
“Justice—!” MacDonald exploded. He held his temper, breathed deeply. “If that’s what you call it, I’m not ashamed to say no.”
Breck could hardly take his eyes from the supine Caesar. “Go on if it’s making you sick. We’ll handle the rest of it.”
With an unsteady gait, MacDonald began to climb the amphitheatre steps. The moment his face was averted, it hardened into lines of determination. He batted the door aside, staggered into the corridor, then seemed to slough off the trembling. He flashed a glance to his right, saw darkness outside the oval window at the corridor’s end. Walking fast, he headed the other way.
At an intersection of corridors, he waited until two handlers passed. They gave the rumpled, sweating black man an odd look before disappearing.
MacDonald bent over a drinking fountain, pretended to drink as he tried to remember a tour of the Ape Management Center he’d taken once in company with a number of other civic officials. Chamberlain’s staff had shown off the entire facility. MacDonald recalled comments about groups of floors having their own electrical control complexes.
But which way to go? He had no idea.
He wiped his eyes, read the various glowing signs at the corridor intersection. Most indicated laboratories along the branching hallways. One, pointing down a hall relatively free of doorways, said Lounge and Washrooms.
He hurried that way, aware of the press of time, and filled with a very real doubt that he could do what he wanted without a mistake.
Luck stayed with him to the point of revealing a stairway at the very end of the corridor. He pushed through the door, ran down one flight, then another. The walls of the landings were solid concrete.
Cursing the wasted effort, he bolted back up two flights, then one more, to a landing with a door marked Power Service, Floors 8-10.
He reached for the handle, started as footfalls clacked below.
Damn! Someone coming up . . .
Swiftly, he went up to the next floor two steps at a time. There he turned around, started down noisily, encountering an armed guard at the power door landing.
“Mr. MacDonald!” the guard said. “I didn’t realize you were in the building, sir.”