Greg Keyes - Dawn of the Planet of the Apes - Firestorm

Apes together strong , he signed, feeling a sort of heat go through him. He remembered riding on top of a rolling machine as they approached the big bridge, Koba side by side with Caesar, Maurice, and Buck—the gorilla who died saving them all from Jacobs. He remembered that feeling. Together.

Caesar says this? he asked. Why?

Because it’s true , Maurice replied.

Yes , Koba said. C aesar is right. I understand now .

He wasn’t sure he did, but the concept left him almost gasping. It wasn’t just about respect for Caesar, loyalty to Caesar—it was about respect and loyalty to all apes. Even the ones who couldn’t sign.

All of his life he had felt almost as if he had a weight on one side of him that made him walk crooked. That weight was all of the things humans had done to him, and the hatred that came from that. For the first time in his life, he suddenly felt the possibility of a burden on his other side, too—one that would balance him, let him walk straight.

Even the possibility felt good.

What do you remember? he asked Maurice.

I was circus ape , Maurice said. I did tricks .

I did tricks , Koba said. Not for circus. For little pictures .

Not understand .

Koba tried to explain. After a while, Maurice scratched his head.

We had little screens in our prison , he said. Had small humans. Sometimes apes. Maybe I saw you .

Why did they do this? Koba wondered. Make us do tricks for them, wear clothes?

Humans think apes funny when they act like stupid humans , Maurice explained.

Why? Koba asked.

It took so long for Maurice to answer that Koba thought that he had refused to do so, or had forgotten the question, perhaps lost in a reverie of his own. But finally the orangutan lifted his hands.

I think maybe they hate themselves , he said.

After a time, Koba left, and Maurice was once again alone. Beautifully, wonderfully alone. He ate a little more of the durian, feeling warm inside, more content than he had felt in a long time. He listened to the forest, the quiet breath of the wind, to the singing stars of his own thoughts, the questions forming there, elegant connections between this and that thing that he had somehow never noticed before.

The feel of bark on his fingers was a luxury he had never imagined. That was an added thing. But he also reveled in absence. The absence of people looking at him, poking at him, yelling at him.

A deep part of him wanted permanent solitude, and at first—just after they left the city—he had thought to strike out on his own. He could explain Caesar’s vision to Koba well enough, but part of him resisted the idea of living together with so many apes.

And yet it seemed to him that resisting an instinct was sometimes the only way to move forward. To improve. To understand. And there was so much more he wanted to understand. More than that, he owed Caesar his freedom, and all of this, even these small opportunities to be by himself. Whatever else happened, he owed Caesar his support, his presence, anything he could provide.

So he did not mind when he saw Caesar approaching.

A good trick , he told Caesar.

A trick that nearly got me killed , Caesar replied. A trick that won’t work again.

There are always new tricks , Maurice told him.

Caesar seemed agitated. He was better than most chimps at keeping still, but the tension in his body betrayed him. Still, Maurice waited for him to speak. It wouldn’t do to hurry him.

While I was hiding, I heard the humans talking , Caesar said finally.

Maurice focused his attention on Caesar’s account of the disease, and how humans thought apes had something to do with it.

If they think we have this sickness, why come after us , Caesar asked.

Maurice thought somehow there might be a connection to the question Koba had asked him a little while ago—the one about why humans made apes act like foolish humans—but the connection was dim in the constellation of his new thoughts. He would have to work on that later, when he was alone.

Don’t know , he replied, instead. But this might be good.

How? Caesar wondered.

If enough of them die, maybe they will forget about us. That would be a very good thing .

Malakai understood long before they found the tracking devices what had happened, but he also knew Corbin wouldn’t believe him, so he let the whole thing play out. He was pretty sure Clancy had figured it all out, too.

They found the tags in the back of a truck parked in front of a restaurant in the small town of Stinson Beach. Corbin swore colorfully for what seemed like a long time.

“They fricking hosed us,” he said. “Smoked us like a cheap cigar!”

“Maybe we should try again,” Flores said. “Use smaller transmitters. I’ve seen some smaller than a dime.”

“If you did, it was in a movie,” Corbin snapped. “The ones we used are the smallest they make.”

“That’s not even the point, really,” Clancy said. “That point is, they figured out what we were up to, and used our plan against us.”

“Well then, expert,” Corbin said, turning to Malakai, “what next?”

“Drive back to that place you stopped,” he responded. “The bottom of that trail.”

“Right, that makes sense,” the mercenary agreed grudgingly. “Let’s get moving, then!”

They made the drive in silence. When they reached the spot he had suggested, Malakai got out, carefully observing the ground. It didn’t take him long to find the tracks.

“Well, do you know where they’ve gone?” Corbin demanded, hovering over him as he crouched close to the ground.

“Not ‘they’,” Malakai said, after a moment. “Him.”

“What do you mean?” Corbin asked.

“There was only one of them. ‘They’ didn’t figure out what we were trying to do. He did. Or she , perhaps.”

“No need to be politically correct,” Clancy said. “Apes have their gender roles pretty well mapped out.”

“Yes, but we aren’t dealing with apes here,” Malakai said.

“The tracks are human?” Corbin said.

“No,” Malakai said. “It’s the spoor of a chimpanzee. But the mind attached to the foot that made that track is not the mind of an ape. Up until now I’ve believed that the apes had a human leader, despite your assurances to the contrary. I no longer believe that.”

“Couldn’t it have been trained to do this?” Corbin asked. “Haven’t apes been used in robberies or whatever?”

“Sure they have,” Clancy said. “In those movies Flores has been been watching, the ones with the tiny tracking devices.” That earned her a nasty look, but she didn’t seem to care.

“Imagine the sequence of events,” she went on. “He recognized the camera, inferred what it was there for, and then disabled it.”

“You said that wasn’t a big deal.”

“That alone, no. But then he figured out—or at least guessed—what the tracking devices were, and why they were there. He then systematically searched the fruit until he found not one, not a few, but all of the devices. Then he used them to draw us away so the rest of his troop could take the fruit. I’ll guarantee you there isn’t a single piece remaining where you left it. He must have known there was a road over here, with cars on it.

“It’s just too much,” she concluded.

“What are you saying?”

“Malakai is right. At least one of these apes is smart—really smart. Maybe he’s a mutation, the next step in chimpanzee evolution. Or maybe he was deliberately altered in a lab. Chimps are ninety-nine percent genetically the same as us, so maybe someone spliced in the last one percent.” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”