Yalu's household was sound asleep.
Urko leaned against the cool, misted wall behind him and wished for a smoke to pass the time until his scout came back. Of course he knew better than to announce to any sleepless neighbor that councillor Yalu was about to receive some unannounced visitors in the wee hours of the morning. On the other hand, once they'd set to work, everyone would fall out of their beds anyway. He patted down his vest for his tobacco pouch. Right then, the scout came back: nobody had tried to sneak out of - or into - Yalu's house; all entrances were locked for the night.
Not a problem; they had brought a battering ram. Granted, there wasn't a high chance that they'd get to try out all their new equipment on this occasion - Yalu was a high ranking council member, and you couldn't just kick down a councillor's door without very good backup from the Council itself - but you never knew how a situation developed. If Yalu decided to barricade himself in to protect his wayward son...
Urko surveyed his team with a last sweeping glance - their body armour was well hidden under their usual uniforms, and apart from the battering ram, they wore no special weaponry, at least not where you could see it. This unit was still experimental, and Urko preferred to keep it concealed from the council's attention for now. They had still to prove themselves.
He squinted at something gleaming from one of the men's uniforms. "What's that on your collar, tac four?" They weren't using names; no need to give away their identities to Zaius' spies.
The man fingered the offending piece of metal. "Jus' a little badge, sir. Bush cat claws. My cousin's a silversmith."
Urko frowned. "Take it off. It reflects the light." And it was just too striking - displaying a part of their group's unofficial name. The men had taken up his mention of them being the 'teeth and claws of law enforcement' and called themselves the 'TAC team' which was a play on words that Urko could get behind, but he wouldn't allow them to have their wives sew blasted streamers with a thrice blasted logo on them!
The thing vanished into a pocket, and Urko waved his men to fall into line behind him. Much as he'd have loved to send them kicking down the front door, protocol demanded he'd try to be civilized first.
He knocked.
Nothing happened.
Urko stepped aside and jerked his chin towards the door. His lieutenant began pounding at it. "This is the CCP! Open the door!"
The pounding continued for some time, while the windows upstairs began to light up one by one. Urko lazily scratched his throat and silently ticked off the hits. He'd give the old fart three more rounds of banging and shouting until he'd allow his men - and himself - to bring out their new equip-
"What is this-"
The door was opened with a jerk, and the TAC barreled in, shoving Yalu aside and taking up position. It was meant to be as imposing and disorienting as possible, and so far, it had worked beautifully on every poor bastard they had selected.
"Are you out of your blasted minds? Urko, I'll have your head for this insolence!"
Well, there had to be one bastard where it didn't work, right? Urko wasn't really surprised that old Yalu was that one.
Wouldn't be half as fun if he wasn't.
The TAC were doing their sweep now, taking care to topple the occasional piece of furniture and frisking the slaves with ferocious enthusiasm. Urko had promised the boys a bit of fun, as long as they didn't forget to bring him Galen and his pets.
In the meantime, he'd chat with Yalu.
"You're harboring a wanted criminal, councillor," he said amicably, while something crashed on the floor in the next room. Yalu owned one of the more avant-gardist houses in the city, with living quarters at ground level. It was very un-simian, almost like a human hut, and Urko didn't mind if he suffered the consequences for it. "That's a capital offense."
Yalu flinched at the sound of breaking china, but kept his attention on him. "And I assume you have undeniable proof of that, Chief General? Because the Mothers may help you if you haven't."
Urko slowly shifted his weight on his other foot and bared his teeth to him. "I have several witness accounts of your son and his floozy arriving at your doorstep and being let in. I have no witness accounts of them leaving, and I have no report that you had alerted us to come and take them into custody."
The thudding of boots on the stairs suddenly faltered and stopped; when Urko looked up, Ann was standing at the top of the stairs. His men hesitated, looking up at her as if seeking permission to pass her by. For a tense moment, nobody spoke.
Then she wordlessly stepped aside, and his team resumed their ascent, a bit more subdued now. Ann swept down the stairs, her demeanor as unruffled as ever. "I'm afraid Mouna hasn't set up water for our morning tea yet," she gave Urko a tiny nod, "as we didn't expect you to drop by this early, General." Urko wasn't sure if she had put a little more stress on 'this early'. He gave her a reserved nod in return.
"The general was about to leave anyway," Yalu growled, "there's no need to be polite to him and his ilk."
"Manners reflect on the character of the owner, not the receiver, dear," Ann said dryly. "If you excuse me, General, I do have need of a cup of tea now."
She turned around once more in the doorway. "I will expect everything as you found it." Her gaze flicked meaningfully to the broken plates on the floor, and Urko felt his palms go hot.
"You heard your wife," he said gruffly, tearing his eyes away from her back, "the sooner you give them up, the less your interior will suffer. Of course, if you force us to turn every floorboard in your house to find them, the blame is entirely on y-"
"My son is not here, never was here, and is smart enough to never come here! Great Cesar, do you really think us such fools? No, don't answer that - it's common knowledge that idiots think everyone else is as dimwitted as them! Give me that!" Yalu caught up to tac six with two swift steps and tore a bronze statuette of the Lawgiver from the officer's hands. He turned back to Urko.
"You're greatly overestimating the extent of your discretionary powers, Urko." He curled his lips into a predatory smile. "And I'll see to it that they are cut down to size. You don't cross a senior of the Council without suffering the consequences."
Urko regarded him silently for a moment. Ol' Yalu had come under considerable pressure from the rest of the council since his son had eloped with Zaius' heretic book. Why the old fool had preserved those artifacts in the first place, instead of making a bonfire out of them was beyond Urko's comprehension, but this wasn't the time to challenge the Council Eldest on it. Especially when his way of handling things had dumped him into such a beautiful mess, him and his network of silverbacks.
"I'll see you hang, councillor," he said softly, and felt a grim satisfaction when the old Chimp's knuckles blanched into a tighter grip around the statuette. "I know that day will come. I can almost smell the breeze that you'll be swaying in." He leaned closer. "I'll find your son. If I don't find him today, I'll find him tomorrow, and if I don't find him tomorrow, I'll find him some other day. But I will bring him before the council to be judged, and I'll make sure to keep you alive until then, so you can watch your old buddies toppling their pilas to send him to the gallows." He nodded at the statuette. "It's what he would've wanted, too, after all."
"Don't invoke the Lawgiver in the face of your blatant disregard of His teachings!" Yalu snapped. "If you had a shred of respect for him, you'd be tilling the fields out in the hills, as is your place!"
For a moment, Urko couldn't breathe; long forgotten fields and creeks flicked up and were gone again before his inner eye, swept away by a red haze filling his vision. He let the rage wash over him and retreat; a crescending roar in his mind until it crested and broke at the jagged edges of his patience. He could wait this out. But one day, one day... Yalu's face was staring at him from beyond the abyss, a frozen mask of old age and disdain.
"Don't worry about me, old man," Urko said pleasantly, ignoring the grinding pressure behind his eyes, the angry heat lingering on his skin, "I know where my place is."
"Sir."
His lieutenant's voice broke the spell; Urko stiffly turned towards him. "What?"
A quick look in the other's face told him everything even before the man shook his head. "Targets aren't here. We cleared all rooms."
"I'll have your head on a platter for this," Yalu growled.
Either their informant had lied... or just made a mistake, and the little criminal had never tried to crawl back under his mommy's skirt, or they had been here and managed to sneak away again under the noses of his guards.
In either event, heads would roll. But he wasn't worried about his own. Yalu had still not understood how things had changed in the meantime.
Urko just smiled and saluted him as he ambled out into the street.
Time to check on Galen's other possible contacts.
Burke couldn't feel his legs anymore, which wasn't surprising, considering that they had put him into a cage that was too small to stretch his legs, but he also couldn't feel his arms and hands, and that had him worried, in a distant, unreal kind of way, as if he was in a dream where you're just a floating blob of awareness and that was exactly how he was feeling, unreal and floating and maybe he was really dreaming, although he was pretty sure that his eyes were still open.
He blinked.
Yes, his eyes had been open, but he wasn't sure that he was really awake. There were movements at the edge of his vision -
- rats?
... but when he turned his head, nothing was there, and the furtive, flitting motion resumed, again at the edge of his vision. It was driving him crazy.
At least they had stopped with the noise now. He was pretty sure that the whooshing sound was completely in his head. His blood pressure had to have climbed through the roof. Or crashed. He wasn't sure. All he knew was that he was dizzy, and nauseous, and aching.
A hot flash of pain bored into his skull, tearing through his sinuses like a wildfire. He jerked back with a gasp and banged his head against the bars.
The guard stared at him from the other side of the bars. "No sleeping!"
Burke's eyes were watering from the pain, his nose was running, the fluid burning like acid, and when he wiped at it, his palm came away red and sticky. He stared at it, then at the ape.
The guard held a long splint of wood in his hand, its tip glowing a bright orange.
The fucking monkey had rammed a burning stick up his nose!
There was a tired joke circling in his brain about roasting marshmallows and homemade lobotomies, but he lost track of the punchline before it had found its way on his tongue, and anyway, he doubted that he could unglue that sticky piece of leather from the roof of his mouth before the asshole had resumed his post at the far end of their hole.
you an' me we're in this together, pal, you should really be nicer to me...
His nose burned like fire, deep inside. Burke took a deep breath through his mouth and awkwardly shifted into a kneeling position. He wouldn't sleep as long as this asshole was in the room with him. Sweat poured down his sides, precious water he couldn't afford to lose, actually. Next time his eyes fell shut, that crazy fucker might poke his glowstick through his eardrum. Or his eye.
He wouldn't sleep. He could wait until shift changed. If he was lucky, the short, fat one would be next, the one who would always doze off himself, and then he'd snatch some glorious minutes of nothingness.
"Pete."
The voice was right beside his ear, loud and clear and calm, without any urgency or emphasis, and Burke knew with perfect clarity that he was hallucinating, and that nobody was in there save for him and the monkey, but at the same time, his father was talking no three feet away from him, and he heard him as loud and clear as he had heard that guard a minute before.
He didn't turn his head. He could deal with hearing things, but he'd get a stroke if he'd actually see his old man standing there.
A perverse urge to test this hallucination bubbled up inside him. "Hi Dad," he whispered. "Long time, no see - and let's keep the 'no see' part, okay?" He flicked a worried glance to the guard, but his tormentor didn't react. Maybe hadn't heard him.
Or he hadn't actually said a word. Maybe he was dreaming again, inviting another stab with a hot poker. He tried to move, but found he was locked in sleep paralysis.
"Close the damn window, Pete. It's raining."
"Sure thing, Dad. It's closed, see?" He struggled to move an arm, a finger, anything , to break out of sleep before his guard noticed his transgression.
With a jerk, he woke up. The guard glared at him, but he was very obviously awake, and thus safe.
His father had fallen silent. Burke allowed himself to breathe again.
"Reminds me of Cross River."
Goosebumps washed over him in fevered shivers. "Oh yeah?" he whispered. "Tell me what went down at Cross River, Dad. Tell me."
"Damn rain. Reminds me of Cross River. Close the damn window, son."
The rain is so thick it's almost a second windowpane. Glass and liquid glass, sucking all the color from the room.
"It's freezing cold outside, Dad." It's not like in Africa, not at all.
"Reminds me." Reminds me of Cross River.
Came back with a thousand yard stare and a silence that choked all the words in your throat. Pete can never decide what's more scary, the silences or the yelling.
"Remind me, Dad. Remind me of Cross River."
"Drops of water. Rain was so heavy, it made little dents in the puddles."
He remembers now, and he'd throw up, but his stomach has been empty for days. Little dents.
"Had already clotted, like jam."
Rain hammering down on pools of blood, on the bodies...
"Swarms of flies would startle up, break out of their mouths, you wouldn't believe how loud they'd hiss, like an angry cat." His dad's voice never changing, as if reading from a manual. "Guts smell like rot, like meaty rot, out in the open."
"What did you do at Cross River, Dad?"
Silence.
"What happened at Cross River?"
"Shut up!" The guard is there, kicking against the bars, and Burke jerks up and bangs his head.
Damn.
Been sleeping again.
It was hard to tell now, waking and sleep and dreams blurring into each other, and now he was dreaming of Zana, Zana holding his head and giving him water, oh god, cool, sweet, soft, delicious water, and he was drinking, drinking-
"No, no, not so fast. You'll just throw it all up in a moment, and then you'll be worse off than before."
No, it was real, Zana was real, and she was here, and she was giving him real water, and he was so happy he wanted to cry, and he did cry, because that was okay, she was giving him water and he could afford to lose a bit again with the tears...
"Now come on, stop that." She sounded a bit embarrassed. No... irritated. He had... he had to get a grip on himself. With a groan, he rolled away from her. He'd drink some more water... but first, he'd sit up. And... and take the cup in his own hands.
He rubbed his bleary eyes and looked up.
Vanda was studying him with an unreadable expression.
"You," he said bleakly.
"Me," she confirmed.
"Can I have more water?"
She raised a brow at that. "Of course, Pete. I don't condone this treatment that General Urko has ordered for you." She handed him the mug.
It was a trick, it had to be, but he was too tired to figure it out and the important thing was to secure the water, everything else would come to him, he just, he was so thirsty, and the more he drank, the worse it got-
She forced the mug out of his hand. "I told you, you must go slowly. No, I'll give it to you now."
She fed him the water sip by sip, and he felt embarrassed and anxious and thirsty.
"You'll get more, don't worry," she assured him. "I won't let you die here, Pete, I'll make sure Urko won't get near you anymore."
Burke waited for the conditions that had to follow this promise, but none came. Instead, she forced his mouth open and pushed something inside. She held his jaw closed to prevent him from spitting it out-
Sweetness exploded on his tongue. It made him roll his eyes back in their sockets and wiped out all thought in a moment of white-hot bliss. It was syrupy, and sharp, and concentrated, like caramel and cinnamon and sunshine, and it was drawing all the water he had just drunk to itself, making his mouth water and his eyes water and his nose water and he pressed his tongue against it, against its paper-like skin and the smooth, pasty flesh inside. And swallowed. And sighed.
She had fed him a date.
Burke could feel the sugar enter his blood, enter his brain, drawing the fogginess away like a curtain. The sounds got louder, the colors brighter, and Vanda's face went from blurry to sharp, so sharp that he could see every single hair of her fur in unnatural resolution.
He was high, he realized. So that's what a sugar high really felt like. He swallowed.
"Can I have another one?"
Vanda smiled. "So you know what I gave you."
"Yeah."
She cocked her head. "What was it?"
"It was a date."
"That's right." She gave him another one, and this time, he closed his eyes and really savoured it.
"How do you know dates?"
"Had them before." That got him another treat.
"And how do you know our word for it?"
"Za... Zana told me." That... that wasn't a secret, right? They knew that Zana had been their handler, so-
Another date, and now he was ravenous all of a sudden.
"But you knew them even before you came here?"
Burke hesitated. If he told her yes, would she suspect he'd traveled through time? If not, she'd ask him how else he could know a fruit that only grew on her own world, as far as she knew.
"No," he lied.
This time, he didn't get a date.
"You know," Vanda said briskly, "I'm really saddened to see how badly the general has treated you, and I don't want to imagine what he'd do to you the next time he remembers you, but I also know that you're a good... man. You don't want to betray your friends, and I respect that. So why don't we try to find a way to save you without putting you into such a terrible dilemma?"
She put a date in her mouth and chewed contemplatively. Burke tried not to swallow; he didn't want to let her know how much he craved that fruit.
Saliva was pooling in his mouth and he had to swallow anyway. Vanda didn't notice.
"I know for a fact that you didn't incite insubordination in any of our humans, so you're safe on that account. And I also know that any apes that may or may not have contacted you weren't interested in you or your friend. You're just humans, they wouldn't even consider you." She smiled at him. "Wouldn't you agree?"
Burke hesitated. But it was true what she said - they hadn't told the humans to rise up and kill their simian overlords, right, and the apes had mostly talked with Galen and Zana. The apes that had talked to him had told him to push the water wheel.
He nodded. He got another date. It was so sweet that he felt slightly sick, but he was too hungry to resist.
"So let's talk purely hypothetical, and with the understanding that all those scenarios didn't really happen. Imagine you wanted to start a rebellion against Urko..."
Now that was an attractive thought.
"You wouldn't stay around here, right? Under his feet. That would be dangerous. So where would you go?"
"I'd go West. Into the Forbidden Zones," Burke said promptly.
"But you were headed North, or so say my sources," Vanda pointed out sweetly. "So how do you know about the Blasted Zones in the West?"
"Must've... must've heard it somewhere," Burke murmured.
"Remember, we're not talking about what really happened," Vanda reassured him. "Just what might have happened, if you had been a bad human." She gave him another date. "But I know you're not, Pete. You're a good boy, you did nothing wrong. Who could have told you about those zones? A human?"
Burke eyed the date in her hand.
Galen found Melvin in the kitchen, furiously chopping okras. "You cook yourself?" He picked up a tiny tomato and idly rubbed it between his fingers.
"Ah, yes," Melvin scraped the vegetables from the cutting board into a wide pot, "I find it relaxing, and I use the time to rehearse my pleadings for the Council." The okras' moisture evaporated with a hiss and crackle in the hot oil, and the aroma of peppers and garlic tickled Galen's nose. His stomach growled and he realized how hungry he was.
"Like my plea in Duman vs Zonderval - ah, that one was genius. We won, of course. You heard about it? You must have, it was before your little, ah, heist on Zaius' study. Man, oh man!" Melvin chuckled and shook his head.
Galen popped the tomato in his mouth.
"There's something I don't quite understand, Galen." Melvin absently stirred the pot, while his gaze wandered up and down the shelves of his spice cabinet. "Ah, there you are!" He reached for a wooden box. "Considering how fervently Zaius and the other old farts want to see you hang for making off with whatever you nabbed from that study, why did you come back? And please-" he held up the spice box, "don't start with that stolen human again. You pulled the wool over my eyes with that bird watching tale, and it was funny even then, but this is serious. I mean, I could get into trouble, too, for having you here, you know?"
Well, it had to dawn on him sooner or later, Galen thought wryly. Apparently puttering in the kitchen did help his old student buddy with thinking.
"I'm telling you the truth, Melv. Urko has my human, and I don't want to imagine what he's doing to him as we speak." He gently removed a cat from the table and sat down on a chair.
"Well..." Melvin opened a battery of spices and began to dust his creation with the flair of a musical conductor. It did smell heavenly, Galen had to grant him that; if Melvin ever considered changing professions, chef wouldn't be too bad a choice.
"That's sad, really it is, but can't you just buy another one? It couldn't have cost too much, there was nothing unusual about it, as far as I can remember, not like the other one-"
"He has sentimental value for us," Galen interrupted him. What a lucky coincidence that Zana had been too tired to come with him. Or maybe it was because she was slightly exasperated with Melvin.
"Ah. Well. But... and I hate to tell you this... if Urko really has it... and we all know that Urko is, well, he's Urko... Mistreated humans can get dangerous. That human you'll retrieve will not be the human you lost."
"I'm aware of that," Galen said quietly.
"You have a wife now, my friend, and a pregnant wife to boot. Do you really want to expose her to that risk?" Melvin had stopped stirring his pot and stared at him, brows creased. "Maybe it would be best if you'd have it put down before something bad happens. Or just leave it be. I mean, sooner or later, Urko will get rid of it anyway."
Galen just looked at him.
Melvin sniffed, put a lid on the pot and pushed it to the edge of the oven to let it simmer. "I know it sounds cruel..."
"It is cruel."
"A human is just not worth taking the risks you're taking, Galen, especially now that you have family! If Urko gets his hands on you..."
"Well, he won't, will he? Not if you help us." Galen gave him his most disarming smile. "I wanted to ask you for some maps of the city, especially the older ones, before the fire. And I believe there is also at least one in the council archives for the sewers..."
"You want me to steal from the council?" Melvin said, aghast.
"Not steal," Galen assured him, "just borrow. You'll put it back again later."
"If someone sees me in the archives..."
"Then you're researching something for a case. Nobody will dare to question you, Melvin - not after Duma vs Zonderval." Galen held his breath - had he laid it on too thick?
But Melvin nodded furiously. "Right! Those damn Orangutans think they can stick their noses into everything, but a case is strictly confidential!" He put his wooden spoon aside and sat down at the table opposite of Galen with a wheezing sigh. "All that trouble for a human! And a fey human to boot! You know, I had a favourite horse as a boy, and I loved it to bits, but we had to sell it and when my father bought it back, it had been ruined by its new owners. Almost trampled me to death. Our head groom had to shoot it. I cried for days. But better it than me, huh?"
"Peet is not a horse," Galen said mildly. "Horses are stupid."
"Oh, don't underestimate the buggers! They know exactly where to kick you." Melvin patted his knee and one of his countless cats jumped on it and began kneading his thighs. Melvin began to ruffle her behind her ear. Then he pointed at her. " Now this is a smart animal! They're so smart that they have managed to tame us and make us their servants! But they're still soulless things, Galen." Then he sighed and turned the cat around so that it faced him. "But they're so cute! Look at that tiny, fluffy paw!" He kissed it. "And you know what you're holding in that paw?" he asked the cat. "My heart, that's what you're holding in your tiny, tiny paw!" He looked up at Galen. "Can you imagine me kissing the paw of a human? Me neither. And you know why not? Because cats are... are..."
"Fluffy," Galen said dryly.
"Regal." Melvin sat the creature on the floor where it began to hunt its tail. "They have dignity. Humans on the other hand..."
And how come, Galen suddenly wondered, that of all animals, humans weren't granted that quality? Horses were admired for it, and apparently, so were cats. Even pigs were treated with respect by the farmers, and with good reason.
Alan had dignity. Peet had... well, Peet had a certain wildness that substituted for it. He was too ferocious to be humiliated.
Was he?
Galen's thoughts turned to Urko, and he felt a calm rage mounting inside, steady and relentless like the rising tide.
"I think humans have as much dignity as any other animal," he said. "That is, exactly as much as we're granting them. What does that say about us, Melvin?"
Melvin put his elbows on the table and regarded him steadily, and Galen felt suddenly pinned down by the lawyer's keen gaze. For the first time since they had entered his house, Melvin gave him his undivided attention. "What is this human to you, old friend? And no, I'm not implying anything indecent."
For a moment, Galen was at a loss for words. What was the human to him? He was... he was Zana's human, and her other human's friend, and he was just trying to help them to get their pet, no, their friend back...
Did he really see Peet as Zana's pet? She didn't treat him like one, she treated them like, like people. And they were people. They weren't apes; but there was no denying that they had distinct personalities, and intelligence, and a complex and varied behaviour.
A memory flashed before his inner eye, Peet crouching behind the corner of an abandoned building in that ruined city, desperately trying to come up with a plan to save Alan; and Peet grumbling about being served gruel in a bucket on Polar's farm, while saying nothing about being worked to the bone for the sake of Zana's clumsy boyfriend who had sprained his ankle in the woods...
And then, as if scrolls were tumbling out of their shelves in his father's library, more memories of Peet in rapid succession, his smiles, his frowns, his jokes, and his complaints (and Mothers, he could complain!). Peet jogging ahead and coming back again, waving his arm to warn them to hide in the underbrush until the patrol had passed-
A strange warmth spread in his chest. If anything about it was unexpected, it was the realization that it had been there for quite some time.
"That human's name is Peet," he said, and calmly returned Melvin's gaze. "I'm very fond of him. I... I consider him a friend. And I'm not implying anything of the 'ape's best friend' variety." He nodded towards Melvin's cat. One of his cats. "I'm talking of a friendship like the one between me and you."
Well. That wasn't completely true. He considered his friendship with Peet to be deeper and truer than his friendship with Melvin. But perhaps Melvin would prove himself to be worthy of closer consideration today. "Will you get me those maps?"
Melvin shook his head and rose with a sigh. "Yes, I will get you your maps, Galen. I already stuck my paw into the cuca , as they say." He stopped at his side, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Now I really want to see this remarkable human of yours - one that you made into a person.
"Dinner is ready, by the way. You should call your entourage downstairs. - Come, my darlings, you'll get dinner, too, of course!"
He vanished into the corridor to an orchestra of meows, a procession of raised tails bobbing after him. Galen stared at the retreating cat anuses without really seeing them. He drummed his fingers absently on the table.
Yes, he really wanted to see that remarkable human again, too. The one who had become a person to him.
A friend.
Now that Vanda was back in charge, things were getting marginally better, and Burke was careful to keep her happy by indulging her in her "let's talk hypotheticals" games without actually giving anything substantial away. It was a fine line to walk, but Burke thought he was doing it well, to which he invoked his current conditions as proof: he had been given clothes, but they were old and ill-fitting; he was given water, enough to save him from delirium, but scarce enough to keep him perpetually thirsty; and occasionally, a guard threw him a piece of old bread or he was given a bowl of thin gruel. They fed him at irregular times, but he had given up on keeping track of the time long ago. There was just no way he'd be able to recalculate the days after the delirium they had induced by depriving him of everything except the air he breathed.
They were happy with him, but not too happy. They kept him miserable enough to signal him that he wasn't as compliant as he should be. That... that was good. It meant he was striking the right balance. Now he just had to keep this up long enough...
Long enough for what?
He hadn't been able to form a plan until now - the assault on his body had just been too overwhelming, and no matter what the religious types claimed, body and mind were an inseparable unity and his cunning, his willpower, and his hope had been drained away with each moment that his body was denied sleep, was denied water, was denied warmth, was denied quiet. Sometimes he'd start trembling even now, just like that, without a reason or any outside trigger. But all in all, things had gotten... not better, but bearable, and now he couldn't avoid the truth any longer.
The cavalry wasn't coming.
He didn't know if he should wish that they had tried to save him and got killed or... or got caught (but Al wouldn't allow that, he wouldn't fuck up like that, like him), or that Al had decided from the outset that it would be fucking insane to try and go back to Ape HQ and try to bust him out, and opted for keeping the rest of the troupe safe and out of Urko's reach. He kinda wished they had at least tried, but if they had tried, then the fact that he was still here had to mean something had gone wrong, and he couldn't wish for that, but then he'd be back to assuming that his fr... the others had done the rational thing and given up on him, and he wasted precious time with going back and forth between the two options until he was ready to run his head against the wall.
They shouldn't put themselves at risk for his sake. But god, he wished they had!
Vanda had said that nobody knew where he was, and Burke believed her. And he couldn't sit this out, the knowledge in his brain wouldn't become obsolete. Polar and his kid were tilling the fields right now, unaware of the danger circling over them like vultures; Lora was... no idea, probably campaigning for human children getting shoes or something, but she'd hang, too, if her name appeared on Vanda's list, just because she had known them and not turned them in. Didn't matter that she had no idea that they were wanted by Urko. Simian totalitarianism was as generous in that regard as its human model.
Katlin... Burke swallowed. Katlin at least would be safe. She had moved deeper into the Forbidden Zone, maybe beyond it, and he had no fucking idea where she was right now. So he wouldn't be able to tell.
But he wouldn't mention her name. Just to be sure. He didn't want to mention the other names, either, but he honestly didn't know how much longer they'd be content to play twenty questions with him before they'd put the thumbscrews on him... he felt sweat break out all over his body...
He wouldn't tell on Katlin. Not on her. Never on her.
His heart was hammering hard against his ribs now. The door was thrown open all of a sudden, and two chimps sauntered in.
And behind them, Urko.
Must've developed a nose for him. Smelled him from the corridor...
The ape eyed him with cold disdain. "Who's played dress up with the frog again?" he asked no one in particular.
"Vanda gave them t-"
A chimp smashed his baton against the bars, and Burke jerked back. "Shut up, frog. Nobody allowed you to croak."
Why is he here? He had been answering all of Vanda's questions! There was no reason for Urko to come for him, it made no sense!
She promised me! She promised she'd keep him away from me...
Burke didn't find the strength to resist when the guards tore the rags from his body, nor when they dragged him up and out into the corridor, and into another room with a... with a round table?
There were leather straps on that table, and now he was digging his heels in without wanting to, not that it made a difference. Human strength was nothing compared to that of an ape.
Urko's grinning face appeared above him. "We're gonna play a little game, you and I. I've read one of Miss Vanda's fancy books, and I thought to myself: well, this sounds like fun. Let's have a little ride." With the last word, he gave the table a push, and to Burke's amazement, the tabletop started to move.
A... a rotating table? Are you fucking serious?
Relief trembled in his gut. He'd just lie back and relax, then - he had rode out higher g s during training than these apes could crank up mechanically. Granted, he hadn't been dehydrated, starved, and beaten to a pulp back then...
Well, good thing perhaps, that he hadn't gotten anything to eat yet - his stomach did get a bit funny now, and his inner ear was protesting that they should stop looping and get back to flying straight ahead.
"I can stop this any time, frog. Just tell me who helped you get through the gates. Yalu?"
And they still accelerated, and now he was beginning to feel the pressure building in his temples and behind his eyes. "I don'... don't know anyone... with that name."
Centrifugal forces. They're hurling my blood into my head. Are my feet white?
Maybe he'd get a stroke, if a vein in his brain ruptured under the strain. Already a pounding headache was building up momentum, not the usual kind that you'd get under control with an aspirin and some whiskey, but the migraine, clusterfucking headache that had people jump off buildings, the one that made you puke-
-but he hadn't eaten anything, so he just convulsed in his restraints and retched, his throat tight to keep his gut from climbing out of his mouth.
"Who gave you food out there? A place to sleep?"
Burke was grateful that he had to stare up at the ceiling, because it was just uniformly dark, but the lamps that sat in the walls had been positioned far enough apart that they were now lighting up at the edge of his vision like a stroboscope on an epilepsy setting. He felt his eyeballs turn upward against his will.
"W-w-we were hunting our... our food... sllept... inthe woods..."
His vision suddenly got tinged pink.
"Faster, boys. That was a game we were playing when I was a boy - swirling rats on a string. Or dead frogs, if you couldn't catch a rat..."
The veins in his eyes were bursting.
It was the thought of going blind that drove him over the edge, that made him cry out and beg them to stop.
It took a long time for them to stop, and even longer until the world stopped spinning for him. He stumbled between them like a drunkard, blood dripping from his nose and down his chest, while the guards pushed him back and forth between them, in a lazy, half-hearted way as if he wasn't really worth the effort, all the way back to his cell.
But at least he hadn't told them anything.
"... and that will be fourteen sembles, thank you, sir, enjoy your snack, recommend me to your friends and family!" Galen wrapped a corn husk around the soft nut bread and handed it over the young office worker who had hurried across the plaza to snatch a quick lunch; took the fifteenth tile from the bundle and gave it back, and put the rest in the wooden cash box under the counter.
His next customer was already nudging the young chimp aside. "A fruit roll and two boxes of nut chips with the special dip."
"One roll, two crispy mixes with special dip coming right up, sir!" The phrases were rolling from his tongue in the same sing-song that every street vendor since the time of Cesar had been using, and for a moment Galen wondered if it was because the cadences had been hammered into his brain from his earliest childhood on, when he was passing the snack sellers every day on his way to or from school, or if the cart was somehow infesting him with its aura of cheap frying oil and extortionate pricing. He was usually a complete mess when he tried to take on a fake identity. But this...
... this had been Alan's idea of "surveillance." If Galen had secretly harboured romantic notions of lurking nonchalantly in the shadows and smoking a pipe while observing the target, he had been wise enough not to mention them, or to flinch noticeably when Alan gave Melvin a list of supplies he needed for this charade.
Like this stall. And the confectionaries. Alan had wanted to make sure that the "Orva's Delights" was well frequented all day, which meant that anything containing meat was out of the question if they wanted to cater to all three races; and so Melvin had vanished into his kitchen for the whole night and manifested - you couldn't really call it anything else - a cartload of delicacies. Galen had worried that his little enterprise would draw attention for the wide berth people would give it. Instead they were crowding him. The only explanation for it was Melvin's special dip.
But it did make it hard to keep an eye on the precinct.
Well, Galen reasoned, at least he had managed to determine when the shifts changed - it was when the black uniforms were piling up around his stall. He still expected the face of a certain gorilla to suddenly appear among the chimp faces, and order a nut bread and a salad on the side, but fortunately, that hadn't happened yet.
"Fuck off, frog, this is not a feedyard!" There was a sudden commotion among the apes. "If you're a good boy, maybe I'll throw you a bit of my sweet roll."
Galen looked up and into the icy stare of Alan's eyes, and felt a sudden stab of apprehension, whether from the unabashed eye contact that the human initiated, or his fear that something had upset their carefully staged stakeout, he couldn't decide. He just knew that he couldn't let the tussle escalate. "You," he ordered, "come here."
A surprised murmur swept through the throng of customers. Galen ignored them. "What do you want here?" he asked Alan, still in the same stern voice. "Did your master send you for something to eat? Do you have money?"
Alan, now in his role again with his eyes cast downward, just nodded and held out his palm with a bundle of sembles .
"Well, gentlemen," Galen raised his voice, "this looks like perfectly good simian money to me. You aren't suggesting that it belongs to the human who carries it around for his master, do you?"
The murmurs died down as the apes eyed him sheepishly. Galen smiled sweetly at them. "I don't care which hand holds the money, as long as it ultimately ends up in mine."
That earned him groans and chuckles and the tension finally dropped. Galen leaned over the counter as if to take Alan's order. "What are you doing here?" he murmured.
Alan pointed at a sweet roll. "You need to close your shop, we're going in," he said in an equally low voice.
Galen rolled the nut bread into a cornhusk; the motions were already automatic, although his hands were trembling. "Why now, all of a sudden? You said we'd need to observe them for at least two or three days..." He handed the roll to Alan and took the money.
"Meet me behind that scribe's shop," the human said when Galen handed him his change; then he melted back into the crowd and was gone.
Galen served out some more snacks, then excused himself by claiming he had run out of his special dip and would be back in half an hour. He drew up the counter and put a sign on the door, then hurried off in the opposite direction from their meeting place; you couldn't be too careful.
"What went wrong?" he gasped when he had finally rounded the building.
"Nothing." Alan dropped a heavy bundle into his arms. "I just feel we can't wait any longer if we want to get Pete out alive. Put that on." He nodded at the bundle. Galen shook it out and-
"What is... where did you get that?"
It was an officer's uniform. Galen gaped at it, then at the human. Alan's face was unreadable. He had worn that expressionless mask since his outburst at the temple, and Galen wondered if he'd ever see anything else but that flat stare from him.
Maybe when they got Peet back.
Galen put on the uniform. Alan hadn't answered his question.
Just as well. "Now what?"
Alan handed him a rope and turned his back to him. "Now you bring in a runaway slave so that its master can collect it, officer."
Galen noticed his use of pronoun. He silently tied the human's hands and wished to be somewhere else. What if one of the officers in the building recognized their favourite snack seller?
But Alan had chosen the time of his intervention well - the precinct was bustling with officers just leaving, and officers of the next shift just arriving, and everyone probably assumed he belonged to the other team, if they spared him a glance at all. Galen silently (and for the first time) thanked his father, who had insisted that he spend three months as an intern here before he had allowed him to switch to law study. At least he would find his way around, and knew enough of their procedures to not attract any attention.
He went through all the motions with his "runaway slave," took his fingerprints, filled out the 'lost/escaped items' form, estimated Alan's value (with his colored hair and beard, it went down considerably from what Melvin had offered to pay him, out of Zana's earshot), and finally, finally led him to the cell block.
They had already passed the first row of cells when another chimp turned the corner, at which point Galen had no choice but to ask his 'colleague' to lock up the human because he had forgotten his keys in his locker and no, he couldn't be arsed to go up and get them, unless you want to hold my human in the meantime? Much easier to just lock the door for me, thanks, mate.
"What now?" he hissed when the officer had rounded the next corner. "I have no idea how to get you out again! In case you've forgotten, I don't have a locker here!"
"Now, you complete the mission," Alan instructed him, unmoved by his current predicament. "See if they hold Pete in any of the cells here. And try to get a peek into their interrogation rooms while you're at it. I'm not important enough to warrant Urko's immediate attention," he added in a less acrid tone. "How many slaves do they lead through here every day? And I bet nine times out of ten of the poor bastards aren't even runaways, but just snatched from the streets to fill a quota," he muttered, turning away from the bars. He went to the far side of his cell and stretched out on the bunk. "Come on, officer, get to it!"
With an exasperated huff, Galen turned away. If Alan wasn't worried about his neck, why in Cesar's name should he be? That didn't mean he was able stop worrying about his own neck, though!
But when he came back a little while later, Alan was pacing his cell. The human looked up when he heard him approaching, but didn't seem to be surprised when Galen shook his head. Peet hadn't been in any of the cells or interrogation booths.
"Well, I had to make sure," was all he said.
"How do we get out now?" Galen wondered.
Alan lifted a corner of his mouth. " You just walk out the door. I bet the line of your customers is already reaching across the plaza."
"It's Melvin's special sauce that does the trick." Galen sniffed. "How do I get you out, was actually my question."
"You don't," Alan said simply. "Our asset will turn up as soon as you reach the base, and collect his property."
It took Galen a moment to translate this into Melvin posing as Alan's owner. "Oh. You - you planned this all in advance?" He didn't know if he felt impressed or unsettled by the human's cunning.
"I had allowed for all possibilities." Alan smiled, and this time it was a real smile, and it made Galen shiver.
"It's what you do when you're at war."
