Robert Sawyer - Watch

Shoshana stared in astonishment across the little dome-shaped island until Hobo had disappeared from view.

The back of her head still hurt. She patted it again to see if the bleeding had stopped; it hadn’t. Hobo was much stronger than she, and an angry ape was not to be taken lightly. But she loved him and cared about him and was worried about him, and he’d never hurt her—or anyone—before.

She had her cell phone with her, and could call Dr. Marcuse if need be. And if Hobo did come chasing after her, all she had to do was dive into the circular moat around the island; Hobo couldn’t swim.

She started walking, but rather than crossing the island, as Hobo had done, she strode along its perimeter, keeping close to the water in case she needed to escape. He’d gone right past the gazebo at the top of the island mound—she’d seen that much. He could be on the ground, or he could have shinnied up one of the palm trees; he didn’t do that often, though.

She continued on for another dozen paces—and there he was, sitting on his scrawny rump, leaning his back against the trio of rolled-up stone scrolls at the base of the Lawgiver statue.

Hobo, she signed. He looked at her, said nothing, then looked away.

Which meant she couldn’t talk to him. She clapped her hands together—he wasn’t deaf, after all, even if he used a language devised for those who were. He turned his head to look at the source of the sound.

Hobo, she signed again. Are you okay? Can I help?

He made no reply.

She stepped closer. Please, Hobo. Worried about you.

Suddenly he sat up straight, and Sho, startled by the movement, felt her own back tense. And then, all at once, he was in motion, a blur of black fur. She pulled back a half pace, but Hobo was not going out but up, clambering up the eight-foot-tall statue of the Lawgiver, until he was high on the faux orangutan’s shoulders, hooting and panting at the sun.

Sign language was a funny thing. When Shoshana signed with Dr. Marcuse, she mentally heard the words in his normal deep speaking voice. Hobo had no normal speaking voice. That was another bogus thing about the Planet of the Apes films—the notion that it was merely a lack of intelligence, rather than a structural deficiency in the larynx, that prevented apes from articulating. And the wild shaking of his fist at the sky he was doing right now wasn’t really a sign. But, still, somehow, Shoshana thought she heard the voice of Roddy McDowall, the actor who had played Caesar in last night’s film, furiously shouting, “And that day is upon you NOW!”

She clapped her hands again, but he refused to look down, refused to listen. She tried for a full minute, then headed back to the drawbridge, hoisting it once she had crossed. She then returned to the white bungalow.

In the interim, Dr. Marcuse had been joined by Dillon Fontana, who was doing his Ph.D. thesis on ape hybridization. Dillon was thin, had blond hair and a wispy beard, and, as always, was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt.

“Hobo just yanked my ponytail,” Shoshana announced.

Marcuse was seated in the one comfortable chair in the room, reading a printout. He lowered it, and said, “He always does that.”

“No,” said Shoshana. “He gently tugs it. But this time he pulled hard.”

“Well,” said Marcuse, “it can’t have been that hard—not by his standards. If he’d wanted to, he could have torn it right out of your head.”

“He came damn near,” she said, and she turned around, inviting them to look.

Dr. Marcuse didn’t bother to get his bulk out of the overstuffed chair, but Dillon—who, she knew, would take any excuse to get close to her—came over and peered at her scalp. “Ouch!” he said.

“Exactly!”

“Did you tell him he was misbehaving?” Marcuse asked. “You know you have to discipline him immediately, or he won’t connect the punishment with what he’s done that was wrong.”

“He wouldn’t even talk to me,” Shoshana said.

Dr. Marcuse struggled to get to his feet, succeeding on the second try. “Let’s go,” he said, dropping the printout onto the chair. The three of them headed outside. They crossed the wide lawn behind the bungalow, lowered the drawbridge again, and walked onto the little island. “Where is he?” asked Dillon.

Shoshana scanned around. He wasn’t atop the Lawgiver anymore.

“There,” said Dillon, indicating with a movement of his head. He was crouching near the base of one of the palm trees.

Sho took the scrunchie out of her hair and shook out her ponytail. They began walking toward him. He had to know they were here—Dr. Marcuse could not cross the little drawbridge without it making a lot of noise. Still, it was a few moments before Hobo looked their way, and as soon as he did, he charged toward them.

Stop, Shoshana signed, and “Stop!” she shouted.

But he didn’t, and, as he closed the distance, it became clear he wasn’t running toward them generally but rather was very specifically heading for Dillon.

Dillon stood his ground for a half second, then turned tail and ran. He dived into the moat, sending up a great splash, and swam quickly over to the other side.

Once Dillon was off the island, Hobo gave up his pursuit. He turned briefly to face Shoshana and bared his teeth but didn’t move toward her.

Harl Marcuse—all three-hundred-and-something-pounds of him—was intimidating to primates of all types. He stared directly at Hobo and repeatedly and emphatically made the no sign: the index and middle fingers snapping against the thumb.

Hobo didn’t sign anything in return, and he soon took off again, fleeing to the far side of the island. Rather than following him, Marcuse huffed and puffed his way up to the gazebo, with Shoshana in tow. He lifted the latch—one that Hobo had no trouble operating—and opened the screen door.

Inside, on the easel, was a new painting.

It was not a picture of Shoshana. The hair was yellow, not brown, and there was some hair on the bottom of the head as well as the top. The single eye—it was, as always, a profile—was brown, not blue.

Hobo had never bothered to paint Shoshana’s clothes. She tended to wear blues and greens, but he had always simply portrayed her head without a body.

But this time he had made an attempt at the clothing, putting a large black square beneath the head.

It was Dillon, in one of his black T-shirts. Shoshana had given in to her curiosity once, asking him whether he had more than one; he had six, he’d said, all identical.

No arms depended from the shirt. There were, however, two orange lines—the same orange he’d used for Dillon’s face—at the bottom of the frame. Each of the lines had a forty-five-degree bend in its middle, and—

—and one end of each line was daubed with red paint, and there were splotches of red on either side of the black square representing the shirt.

Shoshana looked over at Marcuse to see if he was interpreting it the same way she was—but there really could be no mistaking what Hobo had depicted: he’d painted Dillon with his arms ripped off.

“The artist,” said Dr. Marcuse, “has entered his Angry period.”

With the crisis apparently over, Dr. Kuroda had said good-bye and gone back to bed. Caitlin and her mother were settling in to spend more time with Webmind when the doorbell rang. Back in Texas, the rule had been that Caitlin didn’t answer the door unless she was expecting someone. Out of habit, her mother started to get up, but Caitlin smiled, and said, “I can do it, you know.” She headed down the stairs, a curious Schrödinger tagging along. It was Caitlin’s first time using the peephole, and—