"You have a meeting scheduled with professor Zibaya after today's council session, and there's this request by prefect Hamon to get back to him about additional funding for that new clinic for his district as soon as possible." Galen unrolled the scroll a bit further. "It's his fourth request, so I suggest we write him a polite refusal before he decides to set up camp in the lobby." He put the scroll on Zaius' desk. "Oh, and I need you to sign this, sir."
Zaius smoothed down the scroll that had rolled up as soon as Galen had let go, and scanned it. The old baboon never signed something unseen, which would be really inconvenient if one wanted to, say, smuggle an authorization for a personal request between his papers. Until now though, the need for that hadn't come up, and besides, Galen had his own father to abuse for these things.
"Do you need me to sit in on today's session, too, Eldest?" he asked. "Not that the last session hadn't been fascinating," he hastened to add, "but I have some paperwork to take care of..."
Truth be told, he wanted to use Zaius' guaranteed absence to go looking for that human necklace Zana had asked him for. Since chances were slim that Zaius would sign him an official release for the thing, he had to be sneaky about it.
"No, I don't need you to suffer through that session with me," Zaius muttered. "At least one of us should be doing something productive."
Galen smiled in sympathy. The council was addressing - again - demands of the Equal Opportunity movement; this time, the opening of scientific study paths for Gorillas. Considering that Gorillas weren't even expected to sit through a council session, resistance to the idea of having them occupy the lecture halls for whole semesters was high; it seemed ridiculous to many apes, Chimps and Orangutans alike.
"You know," Zaius said as he signed the scroll, "I wouldn't have thought you'd be actually useful when you barged into my office to shanghai me into taking you on. I'm pleased to see I was wrong."
Galen ducked his head. "I don't think I was tricking you, Zaius," he objected. "My resume was flawless."
"And I did owe your father a favour," Zaius added dryly.
"You may still owe him one - it's not really payback when you're in fact gaining so much from my assistance," Galen teased. Zaius snorted.
"Bright and amusing! But I do consider us even all the same." He leaned back and eyed Galen. "What did make you so desperate to become my assistant?"
"Well, it... seemed to be the most interesting position open at that time."
It had been definitely more interesting than the prefecture at the outer edges of civilisation that his father had procured for him. It had been one or the other, as Atiba Yalu had flat out refused to pay another semester of his studies any more. There went Galen's plans to retire from university once his fur turned grey, but all in all, this hadn't been the worst pit to fall into. It certainly presented one with interesting opportunities. Like those humans in Zana's care...
"You write that refusal for prefect Hamon, I'll sign it when I come back." Zaius stood to put on his council robes.
"Zaius..." Galen hesitated. "Is it true that another human machine fell from the sky at Toram?"
The Orangutan turned to him, surprised. "Fell from the sky? Humans? Where did you hear that story?"
"Well... on the streets, I think," Galen said vaguely. "I don't really remember where. I was just wondering... if there are humans who are so much more advanced than us..."
"Silence!" Zaius rounded in on him. "I could have you imprisoned for blasphemy, are you aware of that? Humans are not, cannot and will never be more advanced than apes!" He turned to go.
Galen stared after him. "Zaius! You haven't answered my question!"
Zaius grabbed the door handle. "I never heard the question." The door clicked shut behind him.
For a moment Galen just stood in the middle of Zaius' office, clutching his paperwork. Zaius' reaction had been surprisingly severe. He had never seen the Eldest lose his composure like that before... Well, it had been a shocking proposal - humans being able to build and operate machines. Galen shook his head. It was ridiculous, when you really thought about it.
But that had been the gist of the secret reports on Zaius' desk, so the old ape should've had enough time to get used to the thought by now. Galen suspected that the outrage hadn't been directed at the suggestion itself, but the fact that someone else but Zaius' inner circle could have gotten wind of it.
But he'd be damned if he didn't manage to get into that inner circle himself! Zana's eyes lit up with excitement every time the conversation touched upon the subject, although she took her oath to secrecy seriously. These humans of hers really did seem so interesting. If only he could talk to them himself... learn the things they knew...
As Zaius had said, it was blasphemy to even entertain the the thought that humans were anything but dumb animals. They were unique in that they could talk, but as Yalu had always said, it's what came out of someone's mouth that decided if the speaker belonged to the simian race. According to the old Atiba, that wasn't even the case for most apes. Also according to him, human talk wasn't really different from that of parrots.
Galen suddenly remembered the necklace - his ticket to get close to those other humans, to talk to them himself and find out if they were truly different from his father's house slaves. Well, now was the best opportunity, wasn't it? He had a pretty good idea where to find it. Zaius wasn't as disinterested in humans as he made everybody else believe. In fact, he had amassed a veritable collection of human artifacts in his private study - mostly from archeological sites, but Galen was sure that the latest spoils would have found their way into the backroom of Zaius' office, too.
The door wasn't locked - it was usually sufficient that the front door to the office was. Who else except Zaius would be here? Well, his personal assistant would be; Galen hesitated for a moment. If Zaius ever found the necklace missing, he'd know exactly who to blame.
On the other hand, there was a low probability that Zaius would look at the thing again; as far as Galen could tell, he hoarded these things, but he didn't seem to be particularly fond of them.
As he slowly wandered along the shelves, he puzzled at what most of these things were. Some of them he did recognize - a doll (made in the image of a human instead of an ape, of course), a dagger, something like a pot, but with a curious machine around it... it looked as if it had a water tank attached, though he couldn't for the world of him think of a use for that... a box with a spiked ball that looked like nothing he had ever seen, and couldn't imagine what it could be useful for... there was a hole in the foamy material that filled the box; apparently, there had been two of those things in there originally.
Huh. Oh, but there was the necklace! He hurried over to the other shelf and held it up for inspection. The faces of a human young and a female were etched into the metal. Very fine work; very true to life. There was a third pendant lying beside it: a round disk, its diameter about half as long as his thumb, and almost as thick, but it didn't seem to be part of the human's jewelry.
His mission accomplished, Galen, now firmly determined to leave immediately, wandered deeper into the shadows of the study. The far wall seemed to hold something more enticing than curious, dust-crusted artifacts: books.
Galen had never been able to resist the siren call of a book spine - you just had to read the title, at least. And you had to wonder just what kind of books Zaius would so carefully keep hidden.
Some of the titles were in a script unknown to him - that alone was exciting enough. Some of them were really thick tomes; when he took one out to thumb through it, he was surprised to find it filled with pictures of human anatomy. Galen didn't know of anyone who'd be interested enough in human anatomy to write a book about it, let alone commission pictures for it. Unfortunately, it was written in the same unknown script, and he put it back with a pang of regret. If anything, his curiosity had been even more excited now.
His eyes fell on an only moderately thick book; its leather binding was brittle and so dark that he almost couldn't decipher the title. He took it out and opened it to the first page.
HISTORY OF THE HUMAN-SIMIAN WAR
There had never been a war between humans and apes.
There never... well, he was sure he'd have heard about such a thing, wouldn't he? Nobody had ever mentioned a war! It was ridiculous! By the same measure, you could write a book about the war between the apes and the emus (well, they were a plague, but still - you don't wage war against animals). Galen frowned and turned a few pages. His eyes flitted across the text.
He turned the pages more rapidly as his fur began to bristle. Finally, he closed the book with a snap. His nose twitched. He put the book back, smoothed the spines so that none stood out, and took the book out again. Turned towards the door, turned back to the cabinet. For a moment he stood frozen, hovering between the fervent wish to unsee what he had just read and the urge to read the rest of it.
Here was a book whose content flew in the face of everything apes were taught to believe, and it had been kept hidden from view in the secret study of the ape council's leader. If his former question about the humans had bordered on blasphemy in Zaius' eyes, how would the Defender of the Faith qualify the contents of that book?
Possession of such a book could take one to the block. Well, if you were anyone else but Zaius.
Galen didn't want to read it.
He had to.
He carefully rearranged the books so that no gap was visible anymore, and slid the door shut. Hiding the book under his robe, he silently retreated from the room.
When Galen turned up at the institute later that afternoon, Zana was surprised and delighted to see him, and even moreso when he told her that he had a bit of free time as long as Zaius was in session. He thought he was succeeding in hiding his shock from her over what he had just done in Zaius' private study, too.
"I found your human's necklace."
"Oh Galen, you're a darling! Alan will be so happy!"
"And I will be so happy to finally meet him!"
She smiled at his not-too subtle prodding. "They are in the open air enclosure. Come on!"
The humans seemed listless to him today, not as tense and energetic as they had been during the hearing. Well, the fair-haired human had been brutally beaten by the security and sported dark bruises on his face - and probably not just there, judging by his stiff movements, but if there were more, they were hidden under his clothing.
The dark haired one was unenthusiastically throwing a ball against a... Galen cocked his head... a ring with a net hanging from it, which was mounted on the wall. Apparently the objective was to throw the ball through the ring, but the human didn't seem to care much about his score.
Zana clapped her hands to get their attention. "Alan, Peet, this is Galen, a... a good friend of mine. He has expressed interest to meet you, and I agreed - I think it's high time you meet other apes. Oh, and he has something for you, Alan."
The humans ambled over to them with long, lazy steps, reminding him a bit of a pair of big cats. Galen smiled nervously and fished for the necklace in his bag. His fingers touched the brittle leather of the forbidden book and he jerked them back as if he'd burned them.
The eyes of the fair one - Alan? - lit up when he saw the pendants dangling from his fingers. He took them out of Galen's hand without touching it. His face was tense when he stared at the pictures for a moment; he swallowed and quickly put the necklace over his head, hiding it under his shirt. Then he cleared his throat and gave Galen a wry smile.
"Thank you very much, sir." He had a deep, pleasant voice. "This means a lot to me."
"Oh it's just Galen. No need to 'sir' me."
"Very well." The smile didn't waver. Galen had the impression that the human was so very polite to keep them all at a safe distance. "Pleased to meet you, Galen."
"Oh, the pleasure is all mine. I wanted to meet you for a long time, and even moreso after I saw you at the hearing..."
"You were there?" Zana asked, surprised. "I never saw you!"
He smiled at her. "You were very preoccupied with your speech, but I did wave at you from the last bench, where they place us poor assistants." He glanced at the dark haired human who hung back with a bored face, balancing the ball on one finger. He let the toy rotate on it, a strangely hypnotic sight. Galen blinked and tore his gaze away.
"I'm very sorry." He gestured towards Alan's bruised face. "Our security clearly overreacted."
The human slightly bowed his head in acknowledgment. "It's nothing you could have prevented, but thank you all the same." His fingers wandered back to where the pendants were under his shirt. "Really, thank you - this may be the only way I'll ever be able to look at my family again. Won't they miss it?" He sounded worried; he was probably afraid it'd be taken from him again.
"No, don't worry," Galen assured him. "It was gathering dust in Zaius' office, I doubt he'll ever realize it's missing. He has quite a collection of human things," he added towards Zana, almost forgetting the humans as soon as he spoke with another ape. "And here he wants to make us believe he finds them too unimportant to bother with."
He turned back towards Alan. "Well, not you, apparently - judging by the meeting this morning." He shook his head. "But then you are nothing like our humans, no matter what Urko thinks."
They all sat down in the shade of the wall, except for the dark haired one whose name he had forgotten, who returned to his ball game. Galen leaned towards Alan. "Is it really true that on your world, humans build all these machines? And fly them?" It was strange to think that somewhere else, humans were living and working just like apes were here - and just like, if that book was true, humans had been living here, too, a long time ago... In a way, it was almost easier to imagine that the human sitting across from him, with his polite smile and his quiet self-possession, had somehow traveled from that mystical past into his world, than to imagine he had come from a different world circling around a different sun.
The human nodded. "It's true. We have teachers, scientists, engineers, just like you." He smiled. "We even have politicians and bureaucrats. Apparently every civilization is saddled with them." His eyes sparkled with mischief. "No offense intended."
Galen blinked, then chuckled. "But you need us! Don't let them ever tell you differently... and, and, on your world, are there apes, too?"
The human's eyes became guarded. "Yes, we also have apes. But they are... different from you. Very different."
"Oh. How... different?"
"They don't talk." Galen looked up, startled, to find the dark haired human standing behind him. He hadn't noticed him coming up this close, he had been too engrossed by Alan's words. Now this human was looking down on him from his considerable height, with a not too friendly expression. "And they also don't shoot at us. Or put us in a cage."
"Pete. Sit down. Galen's getting a crick in his neck from gazing up to you." Alan's voice was pleasant, but the dark... Peet... obeyed immediately. Galen smiled at him, but the smile wasn't returned. Peet's eyes were hooded, vigilant. Galen suspected that the human didn't like him very much.
"What do you mean, they don't talk?" he asked meekly.
"They're more like animals," Peet said casually. He didn't bother looking at him, pretending to be fascinated by the ball between his feet. He shrugged. "They are animals, but not like you call us that - they really don't have the brains to be our equals." He tipped a finger against his temple.
In the ages before we awoke, ape was dumb and mute. We were but animals, while humans ruled the world.
Galen felt the fur rise on his neck. This was, this was all too much like in the book! The damn book... he should take it back to Zaius' study and forget all about it. And forget about those strange creatures before him, too!
Zaius! The session could well be over already! Galen scrambled to his feet. "It was a very, very interesting meeting, and I'd love to repeat this some time, but I really need to get going. Zaius may already be back from the council meeting and is probably wondering where I am and why the refusal of prefect Hamon's request isn't lying on his desk." He was babbling, he couldn't help it.
Zana and the humans rose with him. Alan offered his hand and Galen eyed it, confused.
"It's their way of greeting, dea... Galen," Zana explained, and demonstrated. Galen followed her example and was surprised when the human didn't let go immediately.
"Before you go," he said, a hint of urgency creeping in his voice, "I'd like to ask you... you're Zaius' assistant, perhaps you heard something of that other ship that crashed on your world ten years ago?"
Galen's and Zana's eyes widened. " Another ship?" - "With humans in it?" - "From your world?"
Alan shook his head. "Another ship with humans, yes, but apparently not from our world - as far as we know, ours was the first to be able to... cross those distances. But the people of the tribe told me..."
"Wait a second!" Zana interrupted. "You mean that ship fell down in the same place as yours?"
"Not exactly the same place, but close by, yes."
Zana turned to Galen, excited or annoyed, he couldn't say. Perhaps both. "Ten years ago! They put the whole region under quarantine ten years ago! For ten years we haven't been able to study the tribes of the Toram reservation because of a supposed deadly virus!" She huffed, arms akimbo.
So, more annoyed than excited.
"Looks like a cover-up to me," Peet remarked casually. He bounced the ball from one hand to the other. "What else don't your leaders want you to know about us, I wonder."
The book in Galen's pouch seemed to take on additional weight with every passing moment. "I never heard of another ship, or other off-world humans, for that matter," he lied. "But I'll see if I can find out something about it. Now I really have to go." He turned to Zana.
"Seven o'clock, remember?"
"I'll be ready," she murmured, a bit mortified. The humans raised their brows and Peet let out a whistle. "Somethin' you're not telling us, doc?" He grinned.
Alan's smile was warm, not mischievous. "I wish you both a nice evening."
Galen bowed. He already liked this human too much. "Thank you. I hope my father will not interfere with that."
"So... you have a boyfriend?" he heard Peet's voice as he hurried across the lawn. "Tell me more."
"Are you sure we shouldn't give this a little more time?"
He couldn't see what exactly Burke was doing in the darkness, but Virdon guessed from his absent-minded tone that he was already jiggling the thorns into the lock of their cell.
"I mean I'm glad that you finally want to get out of here, too," Burke continued, "but I asked Zana if we couldn't use the perimeter of the compound as a racetrack, and she seemed pretty taken by that idea. Y'know, sitting on our asses all that time sure isn't good for a life on the run. Bit of training wouldn't have hurt..."
He was probably right, Virdon admitted silently, but seeing Sally's face again, even if only in the stylized engraving of his pendant, had turned that dull ache in his chest into a sudden, unexpected flare of pain. He had decided then and there that they wouldn't wait any longer. It was a bit of irony that Burke, of all people, was now suggesting to wait - he had been ready to break out weeks ago.
"Now that Zana's suitor has told us where the data disc is, there's no reason to linger anymore. We'll get all the training we need on the road. We're not completely out of shape. And it's a moot point now, anyway." They had spent the last hour of daylight using Pete's thorns to ease single threads out their blankets and tear them apart along that weakness in the fabric to produce a rope to climb the outer wall. Even if they broke off their mission now, the pile of shredded blankets would be impossible to explain away.
"Let's just hope that the thing really is in that guy Zaius' office," Burke murmured. "Here we go." The door swung open without a sound.
He let the younger man lead the way; although they both knew the layout of their prison well enough by now, Pete was more familiar with the night guard's routine, and his repeated "calls of nature" had given him the opportunity to find a spot where the vicious scrubs retreated from the outer wall far enough for them to climb it.
It was still a tight squeeze and they had to wrap the blanket strips around their arms to push the branches away before they reached the little clearing and could begin to tie the pieces together. At least the shrub protected them from accidental discovery. It would be different once they were sitting on top of that wall. Virdon wished the sky to be overcast at least once. Or perhaps they shouldn't time their excursions to always fall around the full moon, for a change.
Moot point.
He gave Burke a leg-up - in fact, he had to push him up so that he could reach the edge of the wall's top - and felt all his bruises checking in from the sudden strain. He let his head drop back against the wall for a moment. Perhaps Pete had been right, and he should have waited for them to fade, at least.
Moot point.
The end of the rope fell down beside him and he pushed away from the wall with a sigh. Climbing the wall with the help of a rope was something he felt up to, so... he'd be fine. He'd outrun any ape, if need be. They were walking on two legs like humans, but hadn't really adapted to it, from what he had seen. Their feet weren't shaped like human feet; their big toes were probably still opposable...
"They planted the damn things around the outer side, too," Burke whispered when he rolled his body onto the top.
That meant they couldn't just jump off. It meant one of them had to slide down the rope and then try to make a space wide enough for the other to let himself fall to the ground as closely as possible to the wall. He really didn't want for either of them to fall into three-inches-long thorns.
"You go first," he whispered, "I'll hold the rope."
He scanned the dark grounds while Burke let himself down. In one of the buildings, a light was flickering from window to window. He wondered if the guard would be able to make out his silhouette atop the wall against the moonlit sky, if he happened to look out the window. But the light moved on. Small graces...
He felt a tug at the rope, and let it fall down to Burke, then rolled off the top, hanging on his fingers for a moment before letting go. He couldn't avoid bouncing off the wall, but Burke broke his momentum before he could tumble into the thorny hedge behind him.
"Piece of cake, eh?" Burke breathed. He pointed at Virdon's head. "You should do something about that. You don't want to stick out with your exotic beauty, at least not tonight."
His hair. Who would've thought that it would become his distinguishing feature? Burke had told him that most of the humans he had seen on his one excursion into town looked Hispanic; with his dark hair, Burke didn't raise any eyebrows, but from Toba's reaction to him, Virdon suspected that the color of his hair would be mentioned on every wanted poster from here to the borderlands that Zana had mentioned in the hearing. For a moment, he drew an absolute blank; then he untied one of the blankets and wound it around his head to make what he hoped would look like a hood. Burke's chortle destroyed that hope immediately.
"You look like a sultan - or a pirate. No, leave it. We'll just say our master likes it that way. Blame it on the apes." Still chuckling, he grabbed the rest of the blankets and rolled them up into an inconspicuous bundle.
He could see what Burke had meant when he had said that the city wasn't designed like a human settlement; unlike humans, who modeled their houses after the faint memory of the caves their ancestors had lived in, ape houses echoed the trees they once had called their home. The ground floors were forbidding fortresses, with only small slits as windows, but the upper levels widened into galeries and balconies that reminded him of tree crowns in a sprawling forest. They seemed to intertwine, or perhaps it was only the darkness that prevented him from seeing where one ended and the next began.
"Stop gawking, Al," Burke muttered. "Remember, we've been living here for all our lives, and we know nothing but this city and the undying love for our masters." He was walking down the street as if he actually knew where he was going; only now and then a faltering step betrayed that he was working hard to find the route again that he had memorized in bright daylight.
"Do you think we should keep to the back alleys, or try to blend in with the crowd on the main streets?" Virdon murmured back. "I don't see many humans walking around; do they have a curfew for them... us?"
"Dunno." Burke didn't look at him; he was scanning the passersby, too. "Whatever the rules, our master can override them if he wants to, at least that'll be my story. We can't decide anything, remember? We have to do as we're told." His voice was flat.
"As for your other question." He shrugged. "I'm not sure I could tell a back alley from a main street, to be honest. I suggest we simply take the shortest route." He moved on.
"You two! Yes, I mean you! What are you doing out on the streets at this time?"
Burke exchanged a dark look with Virdon before he turned to the elderly chimp that barred their way with his cane. "We're on an errand for our master, sir." His voice was still too flat for Virdon's ears. Burke didn't do subservience well.
"Then your master has a special permit to send you out after dark? And I'm sure he has given you all the necessary paperwork, too," the chimp said in a stern voice. He tapped Burke's chest with his cane. "I want to see your papers."
Burke's body was tensing, too subtly for the ape to notice, but Virdon felt it necessary to step in before all hell broke loose. "We will make sure to relay your request that Councillor Toba should justify how and when he uses his servants back to our master, sir." He smiled an insincere smile when the chimp took a step back.
"Of course I didn't mean... I'm just a concerned citizen... and some people are irresponsible... not the councillor, of course..."
"Of course, sir. Have a nice evening!" He pushed Burke past the distraught senior and made sure to put three or four corners between him and them before he let go of Burke's arm.
"Papers!" He let out a breath. "That could become a real problem out there."
"We'll cross that bridge when we reach it. Or burn it, would be my vote." Burke grabbed a flower pot from a windowbox and dumped it into his arms. "They'll probably leave us alone if you look like you have a job, too, flower boy."
"Really. And what do you have to deliver?"
Burke held up his bundle of blankets from their cell. "One package of human jail break, no shipping costs." He turned away. "Try to look self-important. As Toba's slaves, we're better than the rest of them. We're almost there anyway."
Virdon didn't readily recognize the building where their hearing had been held - a moment later, he realized they had arrived at its backdoor. Of course, it was locked at this time. Burke tried to pick the lock, but gave up with a curse when one of his thorns broke.
"The lock is open, but the door's bolted from the inside. We need to try something different." He peered up to the roof. "I think there's an open window on the second floor." He pointed.
"You want to climb the facade?" Virdon asked incredulously. Burke shrugged.
"I've climbed worse rocks." He noticed Virdon's look. "I freeclimb as a hobby. Well, I did, back home." He began to test the wall for nooks and ledges.
"I used to dig for fossils with Chris," Virdon murmured, his eyes following Burke's ascent. "Seems I chose the wrong set of hobbies for this world."
After what seemed to him a long stretch of time, he heard the bolt sliding back, and the door opened. With a last glance up and down the street, he slipped inside. They both paused for a moment to let his eyes adjust to the deeper darkness. The huge lobby was silent and shadowy, the moonlight barred by massive walls with only a few ventilation slits. The cool marble tiles were icy under his naked feet.
"You know what?" Burke whispered. "I have no idea where that guy's office is in this building." Virdon heard him hiss with wry amusement. "And neither of us can read the name plates on their doors. Unless you secretly studied that paw print they have for a script in your free time."
"We'll just have to search every office," Virdon whispered back.
Burke groaned. "Do you know how many offices there are? Me neither. This could take all night and by tomorrow morning, they'll swarm all over the place to find us! If they don't have security in this building, in which case we're fucked even before that point - I'm not gonna try and fight an ape."
Virdon shook his head. Fighting any ape was suicidal, if you didn't have a gun. Their muscle to fat ratio was different, giving them superhuman strength. Since neither of them had a gun, their only strategy in case of a hostile encounter was to run - that was the one advantage humans had over apes here. "If apes are anything like humans, the most powerful ones will set up camp at the physical top level, too. So we'll start there. We won't need all night, believe me."
"Let's hope you're right."
Perhaps it was just hope skewing his perception, but Virdon thought that Burke was getting faster with each lock. By the time they were out of the city, he'd be a full-fledged burglar. Considering that they couldn't interact with the population - at least not until they were a considerable distance away from the city - that might well become a necessary survival strategy. Without papers (and money - did people use money here?), they couldn't openly buy or barter for the things they needed, so they'd have to steal, or live off the land...
"You! Freeze!"
Burke jumped and bolted down the corridor; Virdon raced after him a second later. The beauty of simple strategies... in case of ape, run.
No light to warn them - the guard had shuttered his lantern. He had been silent, too; must've heard them before? They were jumping down the stairs in huge, desperate leaps, their naked feet making almost no sound.
No sound of boots behind them. Virdon dared to glance over his shoulder. No light, either. Had they lost him? For a moment, a vision of their pursuer swinging silently after them on the ceiling made him gasp in terror. That's what apes did, didn't they? He ran faster.
They hadn't found the disc. No data, what was the point of escape? Not being killed? As if surviving here was anything like living...
Through the back door and out into the streets, people startling, staring, too surprised to react.
A shrill sound behind him, the guard blowing his whistle, calling for reinforcements. Virdon doubled his efforts, his lungs burning. Burke swerved to the left, into a narrow alley, and he followed suit, his shoulders brushing the walls to either side. He could hear shouts and more whistles behind him.
They broke into a clearing - one of the many green patches of the city, not formal parks, more as if nobody had yet bothered to build a house here. Twigs were whipping his face, his toes gripping a root here, jerking away from a sharp stone there, he couldn't trip now...
ground rising up to his face all of a sudden and he couldn't breathe
Something had dropped on him like a boulder, smashing him to the ground, both of them rolling through the bushes with the force of the impact, pinning him down with irresistible force now-
He tasted blood. He'd bitten his tongue. There was an ape sitting on his back, forcing his hands together. He could feel handcuffs snapping shut around his wrists.
That ape had dropped on him from a tree. They had been coming after them through the trees. For a moment, everything around him seemed unreal, nightmarish. He felt strange, not really in his body.
Then the watchman yanked him to his feet and the world became real again. The ape quickly patted him down. "Where are your papers, hm?" He sounded almost bored, as if hunting humans through the trees was an everyday occurrence for him. Well, perhaps it was. Virdon fought against a hysterical laughter bubbling up in him.
"No papers on this one, sir." More guards joined his captor, Burke in tow.
"This one here doesn't have any, either."
The ape sighed, clearly disgusted with him, Burke, and his job. "Alright, take them to the watch for identification. Better tell the nice people there who your owner is right away," he said to Virdon. "That'll make it easier for all of us, including you two. Especially you two." He waved his men away and Virdon found himself at Burke's side again.
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, right?" Burke murmured in English. That got him a slap upside the head.
"Shut up," his guard growled.
Virdon doubted that they would get another opportunity to try. Most likely, they'd be put in a high security prison, perhaps even in solitary confinement, with a guard outside at all times. And they'd probably get a different interrogator.
He'd miss Zana. He had really come to like her, even if he had to betray her in the end.