"That's it." Delia raised her arm and pointed.

Zana had visited some caves during her childhood - her mother had been enamoured with archeology, although she had pursued it more as an unusual hobby instead of a serious profession. Even then, Zana had been unnerved by the darkness and the feeling that they were crawling around under a mountain that resented them for stumbling into its secret chambers, and would entrap them forever in its fathomless, lightless depths for it.

But this was different. In a way, it was worse.

She stared at the gaping mouth of the tunnel that didn't open in the side of a hill, but at her feet, like a huge sinkhole. Only this sinkhole opened the view to a structure underneath the grass and bushland that was usually covering it. It made her feel as if she had been walking over a fire-spider nest hidden under the meadow, a maze of tubes filled with malevolent beings that were lying in wait for a girl with naked feet-

She shook off that memory, and the shudder of disgust accompanying it. The structure in front of her hadn't been made by nasty insects. Zana cautiously crept closer to the edge, testing the ground with each step, and peered into the darkness that was only partially dispelled by the sunlight lancing into it.

A lot of rubble had piled up inside, partially covered by grass and saplings. This cave in was older; of course, that wasn't a guarantee that it wouldn't start collapsing even more with the next quake. She had to be insane to contemplate climbing down there.

"And you've been down there before?" she asked the girl.

The human nodded. "That's how I know that it ends on the big street where the mister and your humans enter the city."

"It must be pitch black down there, once you leave this hole behind," Zana wondered. "Did you even see a thing down there?"

Delia hesitated, swaying a bit as if she was torn between staying where she was and taking off; then she turned around all of a sudden and sprinted towards the edge of the wood. Zana started after her, alarmed, but stopped when she saw her return.

"I used this," Delia said, out of breath, and held up a lantern. It was a crude thing, just a wooden frame with horn plates instead of glass windows, but Zana admired the humans' ingenuity: the horn was scraped so thin that it was almost transparent. It would do its job, which meant she had no excuses left to linger.

She threw another glance at the shadowy lines that were barely visible in the shadows - unnaturally straight, running down the length of the tube. Unnatural - the whole place breathed something both ancient and alien.

Apes had never lived here. Zana couldn't say how she knew, but she was absolutely certain of it.

"Do you know who built this?" she asked Delia. "Do your people have any stories about this city, other than that it's cursed?"

"Bad people lived there," Delia said. "But then Attala destroyed the city and all the bad people died."

She should go, Zana knew - after her desperate hurry to reach Galen and the humans in time, now was the worst time to stall. But she couldn't bring herself to climb down into that blackness, armed with nothing more than a tallow light in a wooden box. Alien things were hiding in the darkness, and she was afraid of what she would find there... or what would find her.

"Who were these people?"

Delia shrugged. "They were monsters. They had bodies like a human, but heads like birds of prey."

Zana sighed inwardly. Trust a human to come up with a tale of fantasy when you asked them for facts. Still, she decided to probe a little further. Maybe she'd glean some insight that would prepare her for what she might find down there. "Why do you say they were bad people? What did they do?"

"They flew over the land and threw stones on people, and other stuff, and then the people died, and the crops died, too, and the water was poisoned." Delia frowned, trying to remember... or to invent more outrageous claims.

Then her face lit up. "But there was this girl, Attala - she lived in one of the villages that the bird-people dropped their stones on. Attala was the fastest runner in the world! When she raced by you, you didn't even see her! You just knew because she ran so fast that she made a wind, and you'd see the leaves rustle in that wind.

"And one day, the people of her village sent Attala to the city with a sun egg, and she had to climb the highest tower of the city, and then she had to drop that egg, and then she had to run away and be outside of the city before the egg hit the ground, and nobody else could do that because nobody was as fast as Attala." Delia stopped to gasp for breath. Her eyes shone with excitement; she had probably put herself into Attala's shoes, Zana thought, suppressing a smile.

"And that's what she did," Delia continued. "And she was already outside the city when the egg touched the ground. And when the egg cracked open on the stones, there was a huge light, and it was so bright that you couldn't look at it, and a huge storm - all the trees broke off, for miles and miles! And after that, all the falcon-men were dead and the people in the villages could live in peace."

And then we came along, Zana thought. Whatever had happened here would probably never be uncovered - apes had no interest to step inside the Forbidden Zones to investigate old ruins. Only some curious human children did... and Alan.

If she put this off any longer now, she'd never stop hating herself.

"I promised your parents that I'd send you back as soon as we reached the city," she said. "And this is it, I think. You said I just need to follow this tunnel to its end? So you run back now, Delia, and... you hide from Urko, no matter what your father said!"

Delia's eyes filled with sudden tears. "But then he'll beat up someone else!"

"If Urko captures us..." Zana's throat went dry. "If he captures us, he'll be in too high spirits to think of you. But if not... You can't let him take all of you hostages. You don't negotiate with oppressors, and you don't play by their rules. Understood?"

Delia nodded slowly, her eyes huge. Zana doubted that she had, but there was no time to explain it to the girl in simpler words. Maybe she'd remember them when she was older - maybe she'd turn into another Katlin.

... and had she just advised a human to rebel against her own people? I called them oppressors...

Because that's what we are.

Just when had she stopped granting Alan and Peet special status, and begun to see all humans as people?

"I think... I think this is as much as we can do. We should start digging... the air is getting worse. We may not have much time left."

The human's speech was slow and a bit slurred, and as hot as the hatred was running through his veins right now, Urko had to admit it was right - he felt slow and sluggish himself now. Strangely enough, he didn't notice the smell as strongly as before; perhaps he was getting numb to it, or perhaps the silent poison was already clouding his senses, he didn't know.

All he did know was that he couldn't allow the creature to crawl out of that hole again. Let it be buried in the ruins of its forgotten greatness, a pile of bones under the fragments of its people's civilisation. Urko's hand wandered to the knife again.

But first, let it fulfil its divine purpose, and save the ape. Let it dig a way for him to escape, back into fresh air and daylight. He pushed the blade back into its sheath and made his way over to the slope with heavy steps. Small rocks and debris was already sliding down towards him, pooling at his feet.

Urko peered into the gray light squeezing through the crack along the biggest boulder, the one that the human had propped up with the beams. It was scratching at that gap, trying to widen it so that they would fit through. Urko frowned. The human was slimmer than him; it would be able to wiggle through long before he would be able to get out.

So he would have to kill it before that point - and that meant he had to stay close to it the whole time, enduring the sharp, acrid stink of its sweat. Urko's nostrils flared in disgust. But he had waded through the blood and shit of screaming, dying humans before; he wouldn't try to hold his breath, no, he'd inhale deeply, and know that he was tasting the human's death.

He could even begin to savour it.

He climbed up to the human with a slight hum in the back of his throat, the excitement of a hunter sneaking up to his oblivious prey. The human was hacking at the edge of the gap with a sharp rock, trying to loosen soil and a curious black sediment. Urko watched it for a moment, then bent down to work at another section of the gap. Once enough soil had been removed under the black sediment, it broke off quite easily and tumbled down into the darkness below them. Urko supposed he could ask the human about the strange stuff, but he didn't bother anymore. Let it fall into the darkness, where it belonged.

A grinding sound over their heads made them both look up in alarm. Pebbles, dust, and bigger rocks were tumbling down around them, and forced them to duck their heads and shield them with their arms as the giant plate of rock began to move sideways. The timbers used to secure it tilted, one of them popping out of its fixation with a hollow clang.

"They're pulling it aside!" the human cried, coughing. "You could've told me, Pete..."

Urko squinted against the dust - the gap was wider now, but still too narrow for either of them. But with the other human above doing all the work, he didn't need this one anymore.

The human was still scratching away at the edge of the gap, but its movements were weak now, and slow. Urko had to fight to keep his eyes open, too... he felt drunk, the kind of drunkenness that was followed by violently throwing up in a gutter. Soon the poisonous air would overwhelm even him, and his men would find them both unconscious, and drag both of them out.

He couldn't allow that. Zaius was much too interested in what these humans knew.

It had to be now.

The nausea was intense now; Virdon felt he'd throw up any moment. Whatever gas this was had to be lighter than air if he was still engulfed in it up here. Instead of fresh air reaching him from the gap he was struggling to widen, the foul smell seemed to stream over his face from below. So this was what people called 'miasma' in the old days...

He could hear Urko climbing up the slope and fought to feign obliviousness. The general made his skin crawl - of all the apes he'd encountered so far, he was the only one who seemed to hate humans in general, and Pete and him in particular, with a passion that bordered on obsession. From Zana's words he had concluded that his hatred preceded their crash on this world (no, he had to stop thinking like this... it was the same world, the same world)-

The boulder above him began to move sideways all of a sudden, grinding against the edge of the hole it covered. Debris was raining down on him, small pebbles as well as bigger fragments of concrete, sharp-edged and big enough to knock him out. Virdon covered his head with both arms and held his breath as a cloud of dust engulfed him. Behind him, his careful support structure was splintering and breaking away. The horizontal beams that formed his working platform shook under his feet as their supporting timbers began to tilt.

You could've warned me, Pete. He had thought Pete would be digging towards them from the other side of the crack. He should've known that his hot-headed friend would be too impatient for that. But then who knew what kind of pressure he was facing out there.

He had to jump down before the whole construction came crashing down around him. From now on, Pete had to do all the heavy lifting - although his plan seemed to work out...

The slab stopped, then moved with a jerk. A whole section of the wall crumbled and slid off, gravel, soil, bigger slabs of concrete rushing down, putting the whole slope into motion. Virdon fell on his side as the ground shifted away from under his feet, rocks pelting him like a particularly vicious hailstorm.

And then something heavy landed on his legs.

The hailstorm turned into a light patter of gravel while Virdon tried to wriggle free; dust was clogging his nose and made it difficult to breathe, and although he was able to roll the piece of concrete from his hip, he found that his legs were stuck in a mixture of pebbles and soil that was as effective in pinning him down as cement. He'd have to dig himself out, and that would cost precious time - and if Pete moved the slab again, he'd be unable to evade the debris...

"Al! Are you alright down there?"

Virdon looked up. The gap was wider now, wide enough to get through, and he could see Pete's head poking over the edge. Virdon's eyes were watering from the dust, and perhaps from that sight, too, and for a moment he forgot the precarious position he was in.

"As alright as you could expect, I guess." He coughed. "My legs are buried in that avalanche of yours, though - I can't get out."

"Shit! Sorry, Al, couldn't avoid that. Is the general ok?"

Virdon sighed, which provoked a new cough. "Yes, he's fine."

"Good thing - the lieutenant here wouldn't have been too happy if we'd pulled up a dead gorilla, if you get my drift."

Yes, Virdon understood perfectly - if Urko had died, the lieutenant would've killed them in retaliation, nevermind that the earthquake hadn't been their fault. On the other hand, as soon as Urko got out of that hole, it would be him who'd kill them.

It seemed there was no way they could win this time.

"We'll throw you a rope and pull you up now. Hang in there, Al - just a few more minutes, and we're good."

A few more minutes, and we're dead, Virdon thought. But I'll hang in there alright.

It wasn't as if he had a choice in that matter.

Zana gave Delia a light pat on the shoulder. "Thank you for helping me." Not that I gave you much of a choice. " Now off you go!"

The girl was gone in a flash, like a startled deer. Zana felt like she was looking into one of those fun mirrors they had at the carnival shows, the ones that tilted the image back and forth whenever you moved. Just like that, her impression of the humans was swinging wildly from moment to moment. Person, no, animal, no, person, no, animal. It gave her vertigo.

She forced herself to shut down those ruminations and to focus on her descent. The rubble was treacherous, and she had to test each step before she dared to put weight on her foot. When she had finally reached the bottom of the hole, she sighed with relief.

It was cool down here; shafts of sunlight just made the darkness surrounding them more palpable. The tunnel opened twin mouths ahead and behind her, and Zana had to fight the urge to look over her shoulder every other moment. She lit the lantern; the light was weak and milky, illuminating herself more than her surroundings.

When she turned around for a last look back, the patch of daylight had already vanished. Zana's heart jumped and began a rapid drumfire against her breastbone. The tunnel must have made a slight curve, she reasoned with herself, an imperceptible bend. The opening was just obscured from her view, the ground hadnt't closed behind her, and there were no alien ghosts haunting the depths, ready to drag her soul into some unimaginable, demonic otherworld.

Maybe she shouldn't have prompted Delia to tell her that story immediately before coming down here. She held the lantern higher - no, I'm not drawing ghosts towards me with it like a fisherman lures lobsters - and determinedly strode down the tunnel, making each step firm and fearless.

Soon the air was getting staler and warmer, and Zana found it harder to breathe. She wasn't sure if the small sounds at the edge of her hearing were real or just tricks that her ears were playing on her because her mind couldn't bear the complete silence. Or maybe it was just rats. Right now, rats were comfortingly mundane.

She had to focus her mind on something else but ghost stories, or before long, she'd be huddled against the wall in the darkness, too frightened to either move forwards or go back! With an angry huff, Zana stopped and slapped her free hand against her thigh. Am I a twelve year old human, or am I a Chimpanzee scientist? Galen would give his right arm for a chance to investigate this structure, and he'll grill me for all kinds of details, so I better make sure I have at least something to satisfy his curiosity... otherwise he'll probably insist on climbing down here himself!

She raised the lantern high above her head and swung it around in a wide circle, trying to make note of anything unusual. The walls were unnaturally smooth; they curved up and vanished into the darkness beyond the weak halo of her lantern, presumably meeting above her head. To her left, the floor abruptly vanished into a canal of even deeper shadows. Zana cautiously knelt down at the edge and dipped the lantern into the abyss.

Two iron rods ran along the bottom of the canal, parallel to each other, for what purpose, she couldn't even begin to imagine. Galen - and Alan, too - would've jumped down to investigate them more closely, but Zana felt her fur rise at the sight.

No ape had built this. Everything down here was utterly alien.

Who had made all this? Had there been... other visitors from the stars? Alan and Peet had come here with a machine; maybe other beings had come here eons ago, too? Maybe they had been bird-like; clearly, Delia's story had a kernel of truth in it, a memory of a long forgotten past, twisted and obscured by countless retellings. Maybe Zaius had been right to be alarmed at the appearance of people who were able to reach this world from beyond the sky. Superior technology in the hands of merciless aliens would seal the apes' fate.

She crawled backwards until she was a safe distance away from the structure and resumed her walk down the tunnel, faster than before now, impatient to leave this unsettling place. She wished for a weapon; even a bat would've calmed her frayed nerves. If anything attacked her down here, she'd only have the little lantern to defend herself, and she doubted it would be any help, not even against a rat.

She was walking briskly, at the edge of breaking into a run, telling herself that nobody was creeping up to her; what she was hearing were the echoes of her own steps.

A massive bulk of darkness pushed out of the darkness; the circle of her light was so small that it was already looming above her when she noticed it. She jumped back and pressed herself against the curving wall, heart painfully clenching in her chest.

After an eternal moment of terror, she realized that it was inanimate. It was... a thing, another alien construct, not an animal, not a... not an alien being. Zana inhaled shakily; her heart was hammering against her ribs. It was just a thing, just a thing.

Another deep, trembling breath, and she took a step closer to it, lantern held high over her head.

It was a huge, metal... cage. No, more like a tube, with holes - with windows? She walked the length of it, then turned and walked back to its beginning. It sat on the iron rods in the canal. There was a door in its side. It was... something like a coach.

Zana slowly walked to its end again. There was a huge window at the front, and two smaller holes farther down; maybe to set lanterns in them, like the one she was carrying? Otherwise it wouldn't have been able to see where it was going in the utter darkness. Then she remembered that it didn't have a choice where it was going; it had to follow the canal it was set in.

She blinked; she had to stop thinking of the thing as if it was an animal; it clearly was something built by the same beings that had also dug the tunnel into the earth.

When Zana squeezed through the half-open door, she told herself that she was doing it for Galen - so she could tell him what had been inside the alien coach. Something crunched under her feet: the light of her lantern was sparkling on thousands of glass shards. All the windows were empty holes, so the panes had to have broken...

... inward?

More shards glinted from the rows of seats at both sides of the central gangway - for something that had been sitting here for eons, the place was remarkably dust-free. Zana wondered if that meant that she was now at the midpoint between her entry and the elusive exit point of the tunnel, too far away from either opening that gusts of air could transport material here and deposit it.

The seats were made of a strange, hard material that showed no signs of decomposition. Since no mention was made of this city and its inhabitants, and the Lawgiver had written down the Scrolls about seven hundred years ago, they had to be even older. Once again, Zana wondered just who had made all this... and why nobody had ever bothered to come here and dig for answers.

She raised the lantern over her head to illuminate more of the interior, and discovered something like a handrail... at the ceiling! Why in the world... what kind of creature would need a handrail up there? An image of huge fire spiders scuttling up the walls and across the ceiling flashed up in her mind, and she blinked rapidly to chase it away.

I should go. I won't solve this mystery today...

Instead she wandered down the gangway, casting the weak light of her lantern against the walls, wondering about the strange markings beside the second, blocked and warped door - it looked like a foreign script, and she wished she had the time to copy the symbonygrinofaskull-

Zana jerked back, feet skidding on the glassy gravel. She bumped into the hard edge of a seat and completely lost her footing. The beam of her lantern flickered over the walls as she desperately held it up over her head to save it from tumbling between the rows of seats and going out.

For a moment she just lay there, panting, heart racing. Her hip pounded with a dull ache where she had hit the seat's edge, and the pain of a hundred fire spiders bit into her right palm. When she inspected it in the lamp light, tiny bits of glass sparkled, like diamonds in the bright red setting of her blood that was oozing from the cuts.

Zana heaved a shuddering breath. She had let the atmosphere of these old ruins unnerve her so deeply that she had jumped at the sight of a heap of bones! Whatever lay sprawled over that seat was long dead. It couldn't harm her... she had done that to herself.

She scrambled to her feet, annoyance burning away her fear. She would not let this place spook her any longer! She'd walk down this gangway, see what was there, then exit this coach... thing, and resume her way to the real exit, that of this damn tunnel, and-

There was more than one of them.

The rest of the seats were occupied. Zana swallowed and forced herself to lower her lantern to the nearest remains and have a closer look. The air in these tunnels was dry enough to allow a certain degree of mummification - at least as far as horn and hair was concerned. The pattern of fur distribution on these corpses told her with one glance, what a second look at their jaws and eye ridges confirmed:

All the passengers had been humans.

The patter of her heartbeat was echoed by the pulsating hum in her head. Humans... humans had been riding in this coach. Something had killed them all at once, and completely unexpectedly: all of them were seated, nobody had tried to escape to the exit.

And they had been humans! Delia had said the inhabitants of this city had been enemies of humans, terrorizing them with advanced weapons - so what had they been doing down here?

Maybe they had been slaves, just like they were now?

You never catch a break, you poor creatures, do you?

Or maybe Delia's story had been corrupted over the centuries, and humans had been the creators of this city, this... this strange technology? The thought made her shiver.

No, she realized a moment later. Not she had trembled, but the floor under her feet. Zana spun around and stumbled back to the only usable door. If she was still in here when another quake hit... Forget about science; she had to get to the end of this shortcut as quickly as possible!

She broke into a run.