There was a deer in the next cage, with ultraviolet lights to keep it warm. Jim didn’t think it was going to make it. Pneumonia was always bad with animals, and the deer family hardly ever recovered from it. Too bad, really, but at least it wasn’t one of the rare species. The gorilla was in the next cage, and it seemed to be asleep. That was a bad one, thought Jim. His official name was Bobo, but somebody had dubbed him “Monstro” and that stuck. He had been all right until his mate died, then he’d taken to brooding, and he was getting meaner all the time. Jim hoped the curator would trade Monstro to another zoo, someplace that needed a gorilla. It would be nice if they had an unattached female Monstro could woo, but the chances were pretty slim at his age.
Then there were the three new chimps. Nice healthy ones. They must have been sombody’s house pets, because they insisted on wearing clothes. They wanted to keep knives, too. Jim had been firm about that. The zoo rules had to be kept, even by chimpanzees brought in by the Navy and a lot of doctors and armed Marines. The lights were still on in the new chimps’ cage. Jim made sure there was plenty of bed straw and that the floors were clean, and they had oranges and bananas to eat. They were acting a bit scared. They hadn’t eaten anything, and they wouldn’t climb on the jungle gym or swing on the tires, but maybe they’d get over that in a day or so. Chimps were always fun. Jim had never had any trouble with chimps. He liked them.
The female seemed lonesome, sitting there at the edge of the cage. Jim found an especially nice banana and peeled it for her. He reached through the bars. The regulations said he wasn’t supposed to get that close to the cages when he was alone. Apes could grab a man and hurt him. They wouldn’t mean to, usually, but they could play rough, and it might be necessary to hurt one of the animals if it got loose.
But he’d never had trouble with chimps, and she looked so lonesome sitting there.
She slapped the banana away. Then she slapped him.
Jim stepped back from the cage and shrugged. “Have it your way, mate. Good night.” He flipped out the lights, and swung his flashlight around for a final inspection. Everything was in order, and he left the hospital ward, carefully closing the door.
The chimpanzees stared at the closed door.
“I’m not his mate,” the female said carefully. “I’m yours.”
“Zira, please. Control yourself, my dear. I think they’re trying to be kind.”
“This cage stinks of gorilla,” Zira insisted. She sat on the straw. One of the males joined her and took her hand. “But—Cornelius, where are we?” she asked. “And why are we pretending to be dumb animals?”
Cornelius looked up at the other male. “It was your idea, Dr. Milo. You haven’t had a chance to explain before. I think now would be a good time.”
“I did not think it wise to let them know we can speak, before,” Milo said carefully. He peeled an orange and ate it, grimacing as the juice ran across his fingers. “Now I’m sure of it. Consider. As we achieved orbit in Colonel Taylor’s spacecraft, we saw an explosion below. At least one entire hemisphere was destroyed. I do not doubt that the entire earth was made uninhabitable. Are we agreed?”
The seated chimpanzees nodded. “But if Earth is destroyed, where are we?” Zira asked again.
“I’ll tell you in a moment. Consider the situation, then. We are possibly the only survivors of our civilization. The last of the apes have killed each other in a war that no one could win. The fools have accomplished what they’ve been trying to achieve for centuries, and we can never go home. Now. As to where we are. I believe that in some fashion—and I lack the intellect to know precisely how, although I have theories—we have traveled from our own time into the past. Our civilization, the time of the apes, is in the distant future of this time. We are in our dim past, at a time when men are the dominant species on Earth, and apes cannot as yet speak.”
“But—we saw the earth destroyed!” Cornelius insisted.
“And Earth will be destroyed,” Milo said evenly. “Just as we saw it. But it destroyed itself in such a manner that we were sent into the past.”
“How?” Cornelius insisted.
“I told you, I am not precisely certain,” Milo said. “The philosophers have shown there is a definite relationship between time and velocity. Somehow, we had, through the combined orbital velocity of our spacecraft and that imparted to us by the greatest explosion in Earth’s history, just the right velocity to send us into the past. If you do not like that explanation, call it magic; I have no better one. The important thing is, we are here.”
Cornelius nodded. “All right. We’re in our own past. What an opportunity!”
“For an historian like yourself, yes,” Milo agreed. He looked around the cage and up at the electric lights, and waved his arms expansively. “Marvelous equipment! Think, Cornelius, all the old legends are true. Humans did have a machine civilization, with power to do almost anything they wished!”
“And destroyed it,” Cornelius reminded him.
“And destroyed it,” Milo repeated. He lowered his voice in wonder. “But why, Cornelius? With all this, with so many amazing things, so much we have not seen but must exist for all this to exist, could they not have been happy with it? We would have been dazzled by a tenth of this.”
“For how long?” Zira asked.
Milo nodded. “True. Humans and apes alike, never satisfied with what they have.” He sighed and paused a moment. “Your first question,” he said. “Consider. If we speak, the humans will ask us about our origin.” He had turned very serious. “Will we be able to conceal enough from them? I do not think they would be edified to learn that one day their world will crack like an egg and fry to a cinder because of an ape war of aggression.”
“I see,” Cornelius said. “I think you are right. Zira? Do you agree?”
“No.” She looked around the semidarkened cage. “If we don’t talk to them, they’ll keep us in cages. They won’t give us any clothes. We don’t even have sanitary facilities! Cornelius, I can’t live like a barbarian! We are civilized intellectuals.”
“Shh,” Milo said. “You’re disturbing the gorilla.” He pointed to the inhabitant of the next cage.
“Oh. Sorry,” Zira called. There was no answer and she looked up, not too surprised. Gorillas were never polite.
“He doesn’t understand you,” Milo reminded her. “Apes, at this instant in time, cannot yet talk. And I believe that for the moment, we would do well to follow their example. We can reveal nothing if we will not communicate with them.”
“All right,” Cornelius said. “I’ll go along. Zira?”
“Good night,” she told him. She stretched out on the straw and grimaced. “I think we will need the sleep. Good night.”
Zira woke early. The zoo was filled with unfamiliar noises: birds whistling, the growls of large carnivores, mechanical sounds of the zoo machinery. She could identify almost none of it. The whole concept of a mechanically dominated world was alien to her, although her husband’s historical research had at least made her intellectually familiar with the idea. She knew about this world, but she couldn’t feel it.
Cornelius and Milo were still asleep as Zira got up from the straw and washed herself in the shallow pool in one corner of the cage. The big male gorilla still slept in his own cage; Zira curled her lip at him. She had never liked gorillas, although she knew it was an indefensible prejudice.
Zira spent the next few minutes exploring the cage. It was certainly secure, fastened with padlocks that required keys. She didn’t wonder that the humans had used that kind of lock. In her own world and time, men in cages would play with the locking system so that if there were any way it could be opened without a key, they’d get it open. She supposed that apes must do the same here and now.