Zana had a strange sense of dejà vu when she walked down the silent row of cages. The looks the humans gave her were much like on that first day: guarded, sullen. She saw that Alan wasn't as roughed up as she had feared from the photo in the newspaper.
Not that it mattered anymore.
"I'm sorry for the trouble you must be in because of us," he said softly... but unapologetically.
The trouble I'm in! You have no idea of the trouble I...
No, they didn't, she realized with a sudden wave of nausea. They had no idea what was coming.
And I'm the one who has to tell them.
She felt like crying again.
"How could you be so stupid?" she asked helplessly.
Peet crossed the cage and grabbed the bars with both hands. "Perhaps you should spend some time on this side of them," he shook them, "and rethink that question." He pushed away from the bars. "Our first duty was to escape."
She noted his choice of words. I'm not one of your 'captured in the wild' animals. That was exactly the problem, she thought tiredly.
"You should have escaped, then. What were you doing in the council building?"
He gave her a sideways glance. "Looking for our stuff."
"Your stuff?" She threw her arms up in despair. "That's why you didn't run straight to the city walls as fast as you could and keep on running until you reached strays' territory? What could be so important to delay you until you got captured to be executed?"
They stared at her.
There. She had said it.
There really was no way she could have told them other than screaming. You will die, you fools, you will die, and how can I tell you that as if I was discussing your lunch?
Peet licked his lips. "So that's... that's it, then, yeah?" He looked as numb as she felt, nodding slightly, as if repeating her words in his mind. "Execution. We're," he waved at the cage, "on death row."
Alan looked pale, too. "I... honestly hadn't expected this," he murmured. "This seems like a... an overreaction."
"I'm so sorry." Zana rubbed her face. "I tried to convince Zaius to change his mind... but he said he couldn't justify it to the council anymore. I really tried," she repeated.
Alan nodded, that absent look still in his eyes.
She heard the Gorillas coming down the stairs then. The humans turned their heads in the direction of the noise, too.
That's when she fled.
Gula found her sitting on the stairs to the open-air enclosure, her head buried in her hands.
"Everything's ready," he told her gruffly. "We tied 'em down to the tables in the lab. Din' struggle much," he added after a moment. "Din' even have to beat 'em... much."
"Thank you, Gula," Zana murmured. "I'll be there in a minute." She sat unmoving until the sound of his footsteps had faded into the distance.
She felt only exhaustion now. That was good. No energy left for grief or guilt, she could do this now. It would be quick and painless, just a deep sleep without awakening. It was very civilized.
Yes, they were so civilized.
Her feet were heavy, her shoulders were heavy, the air had become heavy and her chest hurt from the exertion of sucking it in. When she opened the door to the lab, the men were silent, but the air was thick with the scent of their fear.
Peet's eyes widened when he saw her. "What are you doing here?" It took him a second of white-faced refusal of the obvious, before he sputtered, "Look, you... you can't be serious... seriously doing that? Why you?" His voice broke at the last word. Her heart broke, too.
"Because you're my responsibility, Peet." Her voice was surprisingly calm, surprisingly steady. How did she do that? She didn't know. "It wouldn't be right to send someone else." She took the wrong glass bottle from the cupboard, read the label, put it down, grabbed the right one.
"Did Urko tell you that?" She wished he would stop struggling against the leather straps tying him to the table. It was useless, but so painful to watch. "Or Zaius?" Zana heard him draw a sharp breath when she began to draw up the drug into the first syringe.
"This is murder - I'm not an animal, I didn't do anything! I didn't kill anyone, I didn't... I didn't attack anyone, I didn't even steal a damn thing!"
"Zana..." That was Alan's voice, deep and hoarse. She didn't turn to look at him. She carefully set down the first syringe and took up the second one. "You don't have to do this yourself. Pete is right. Send... send someone else."
Her hands shook. He was thinking of what this was doing to her, instead of what she was doing to them? How could he? How could he?
She came to his table to put the tourniquet around his upper arm and forced herself to look at his face then. She had told Zaius she wasn't a coward and she wouldn't do this without looking them in the eye. He was lying still, not struggling against the restraints, but his eyes were wet.
"Don't do it, Zana," he whispered. "Don't let them use you like that. If you do this, it will haunt you for the rest of your life."
The syringes shattered on the floor. She couldn't see his face, everything was blurred by her tears. She turned away and hastily wiped her eyes.
"Clean up that mess," she said harshly to the animal attendant who had been watching them silently from the door. "Put the shards away before someone steps in them."
I can't do this. This isn't right. I won't do this. She swallowed and quickly drew up two other syringes while the Gorilla set to work.
This time, she didn't look into Alan's face. She heard Peet moan Zana, please... while she listened to Alan's breaths becoming shallow. When she looked up, his eyes, his wonderful blue eyes, were half shut. His lips had parted slightly. She felt for the pulse at his throat.
Peet had stopped struggling when she came to his table, but his whole body was rigid. His eyes were wide, pupils huge from fear he else refused to show. Her proud, stubborn human.
"Funny thing," he whispered. "In our world, apes can't cry. 's just not in their repertoire. I always wondered if they cry here."
She inserted the needle into his vein. "They do, Peet. They do."
Afterwards, she told the Gorilla not to let anyone move the bodies; "They're slated for dissection later." She locked the door after him. It was shortly after lunch break.
She didn't bother to put in a leave notice. She just kept walking.
Zaius didn't look up when the necklace was dropped on the desk before him. Urko hadn't bothered to knock; he never did. So Zaius didn't bother to acknowledge him right away. It had become their way of greeting.
He heard the seat creak as the Gorilla sat down with a sigh.
"That's all they had from your stuff," the general growled. "That clown from the city watch swore up and down they never entered your office, though." He gestured towards the jewelry. "Which begs the question how that ended up back around the human's neck." A slow smile spread over his face. "Such a nice neck. I'm sure their heads would've been a highlight on my wall. Unfortunately they wouldn't let me take a souvenir - they want them for dissection." He carefully pronounced the word. "But I have dibs on their balls - told them not to lose 'em." He laughed heartily about his own joke.
Zaius just glanced at him with disgust before he took up the necklace. He held it up: human faces were engraved on the pendants. Probably some family members. He could understand why the human had wanted it back so urgently. He slowly put it back down.
"That is, indeed, an interesting question," he acknowledged, pointedly ignoring the rest of Urko's words.
The Gorilla smiled, a sardonic glint in his eye; he'd noticed, of course. "Better check your inventory," he advised, "who knows what else is missing."
"Such as explosives, you mean?" Zaius asked testily. "I'll have a lock installed tomorrow, in acknowledgement of the city's deteriorating mores. I don't want another... earth-shattering committee session. I think we all had enough excitement for some time."
Urko's smile widened. "Oh, I know of some arses I'd like to light that fire under."
Zaius just shook his head. How that ape had managed to rise through the ranks without resistance was beyond him. He was already dangerous enough now, but apparently his ambition couldn't be satisfied within the military any longer.
If Urko became a political problem, it would fall to Zaius to solve it. He didn't look forward to that day, but he wasn't a fool. The day would inevitably come. He closed his hand around the pendant.
Urko nodded at it. "We could've been sitting here like that weeks ago, without all that 'earth-shattering' nonsense, if you'd listened to me from the beginning." He stretched his legs. "Told you there's only one way to deal with the critters." He pointed his index finger at Zaius like a gun. "Right between the eyes. Pow pow." His teeth gleamed.
"Yes, and in another ten years we kill the next batch," Zaius huffed. "Or perhaps the next batch will come in five years, or in two. And perhaps it won't be one machine. Perhaps it will be one hundred."
"Perhaps, perhaps." Urko scoffed. "Perhaps you should stop shitting your pants over things that may never happen. Let 'em come. We'll deal with them as we already did. Twice!"
Zaius banged his fist on the table in frustration. "Don't you understand, Urko? These humans can build machines that fly among the stars! What kind of weapons can they build with that knowledge? We can't even begin to understand them, and now that I was forced to kill these two, we're no closer to knowing how to prepare for their arrival. And they will come, make no mistake."
He rose and went to the window. When he spoke, he didn't see the city sprawling out from under him, bright screens against the sun dotting the trees' crowns like exotic flowers, birds rustling in the undergrowth, children screaming and laughing from some schoolyard, out of sight.
"Do you know what it's like to have a recurring nightmare? I run from disaster, but it follows me wherever I turn. Then finally, it is gone. I'm free.
"And then it rises before me. Fire falling from the sky... and a huge wave rising to swallow us all. A gigantic wall of blackness, rising and rising, until it fills the sky. I can feel the earth shaking. I hear children screaming." He turned around.
"That is what human destruction will look like when they'll come. When the day comes."
The soldier looked unimpressed. "Dreams. They're for women and old men." He snorted. "If you're so concerned for our safety, why don't you dedicate more of the budget to our weapons research and development department than to that crazy woman's 'movement'?"
Zaius sighed. What had possessed him to share his most private fears with that brute? Just because Urko hated the humans with disturbing intensity, it didn't mean he would also share Zaius' understanding of the danger they really posed.
"I'd have thought you'd be more sympathetic to the plight of your fellow Gorillas," he noted.
Urko rose from his seat. "They aren't my fellas. Everything I am, I made myself. I sweat, I bled, and I tore each and every promotion from the closed fists of chimps who thought I'd only be useful for digging latrines and bashing human cubs against rocks. I didn't receive alms from a middle-aged 'activist' who projects her unfulfilled motherhood needs on grunting knuckleheads who don't know their arse from their face." He put on his helmet. "And I wouldn't have taken them, either."
His heavy steps sounded down the corridor.
Zaius opened his palm and stared at the necklace. He didn't want to ponder who could have taken it to the human. It wasn't important. It didn't have any capacity to do harm and anyway, it was back where it belonged.
But it would probably wise to "check his inventory." Sometimes even uncivilized brutes had a bright thought. He slowly wandered down the shelves, frowned when he came across the box with explosives, now lacking half of its content... nothing else seemed to be amiss.
Then his eyes fell upon the book cabinet.
Someone had taken the time to close the gap between the books, but Zaius knew all of them by heart and like a hen realizing that one of her chickens was missing, he noticed in a single, heart-stopping moment that the History of the War was not in its place.
The humans had never been in here; Urko had no interest in books - he had only stolen the explosive to force his hand in the session. Nobody else had access to this room... save one ape.
With a groan, Zaius left the study.
Yalu was his oldest friend. They didn't always see eye to eye in the Council... well, almost never, to be honest... but how - how in the world was he going to tell him about his son?
For a moment, Zaius just sat at his desk, his head in his hands.
Then he straightened with a sigh and reached for the bell. His servant appeared a moment later.
"Get me Galen, right away," he told him. But the human didn't move.
"Master Galen hasn't come to work today, sir."
Zaius sighed. "Then go find General Urko. It's his business now, anyway."
The sunlight was as unreal as the cobblestones, as distant as the waving leaves, as etheric as her own body. Zana was a floating consciousness, all eyes, no body. She didn't feel her feet, but she also didn't feel her heart, and that was good. She knew, with the unquestioning certainty of a dreamer, that her heart was currently somewhere far away, howling and raw, and she was absently happy that she wasn't in that place, too.
She had no destination in mind, no mind to hold a destination in, she only felt that to keep moving was soothing her; as long as she put one foot in front of the other, her heart kept lagging behind. If she kept walking, it would never catch up with her.
Sometimes, sudden impressions would flare up in her mind with blinding clarity, taking on the weight of reality for a moment: a little chimp boy on his mother's hand, staring up into her face as he was dragged along; an old Orangutan woman carefully arranging a potted plant in a windowbox; a young human, his back bowed under a heavy load, head down, trotting after his master; a vendor selling ice cream...
Peet closing his eyes in bliss as he ate his ice cream, sighing with pleasure and Peet jumping into the air, throwing the ball through the ring-net on the wall and Peet and Alan racing across the lawn, trying to snatch the ball from each other without touching the other's body - they were always trying to explain the rules of their games to her, but they had so many different ball games and she always confused which rule belonged to which game - and Alan lying in the grass on his back and smiling up to her and his eyes were as blue as the sky above her
She rubbed her eyes and rubbed her eyes, but the tears wouldn't stop and she couldn't bear the stares of the passersby anymore.
I'm not a murderer.
I don't know what I am anymore.
She was out of breath and hot inside her fur when she reached the top of the hill far above the city, but she didn't pause to catch her breath; she threw off her robe and began to climb the old oak that crowned the hill, strong chimp arms catapulting her into the branches in mere moments.
She stood on the lower branches for a moment, hugging the trunk as if drowning.
I didn't do what I should've done. The thought didn't form actual words in her head; it was a certainty that seemed to emerge from her very bones, a sudden ache that was trembling through her like the wind in the leaves above her.
I can never go back now.
She slowly began to rock herself, tearing at the trunk. When the smooth wood didn't budge, she grabbed the branches above her, shaking them with growing fury. The leaves rustled as in a storm, showering the naked earth around the trunk. She shook the tree with ever greater force, feeling the rage build and build inside herself until it broke free from her throat. She shook the tree against the city, against the council, against Zaius, against herself, screaming at the top of her lungs until she couldn't breathe anymore, until her chest hurt, her throat hurt, and she huddled against the trunk, her head against the rough wood.
And her heart finally caught up with her.