Beneath The Planet Of The Apes (10 page)

It was terrifying.

And he had no idea where Nova was. Or what they might have done to her. Whoever
They
were.

They!

In his torn-apart and beleaguered intellect, he was no longer able to make any judgments or solve any mental problems. His entire universe of consciousness and stable thinking was awry; he had lost all sense of rhythm, balance and common sense.

He was only hurtingly aware of one great truth.

He had fled from the mockery of the Great Apes into something perhaps twice as alien, a dozen times more hazardous. A hopeless morass of terror, horror and who knew what else?

Meaning—he had jumped from the frying pan directly into the fire.

As perhaps—Taylor had?

It was too early to tell. Too early to tell anything.

He didn’t know.

He might never know.

Blindly, obediently, he suffered himself to be led by the marble-faced guards to another part of this Crazy House forest.

All he did wish, and hope for, with every fiber of whatever of his being still belonged to him by right of his own individuality, was that the girl was all right.

Safe.

Unharmed.

Untouched by the madness that seemed to surround him on all sides. The sheer glare of lunacy that had become a part of all his waking reflexes and responses. And reactions.

Not even H.G. Wells at his wildest, not even Jules Verne, had dared conceive of a civilization dedicated to the Bomb.

This, indeed, was a journey into the Absurd.

And the terribly frightening—

For he knew that he was somewhere on Fifth Avenue and the vaulted building he had just left was St. Patrick’s Cathedral!

Another white corridor.

Another trip into isolation and weird world-within-worlds.

Brent, flanked by his grim guards, found himself being ushered down a long bare corridor, a narrow passageway which was lined all along the route with uniform busts, honoring some form of dynastic succession. It wasn’t until the last bleak, awesome stone head and shoulders that Brent got any inkling of what he was seeing. This last impressively mounted face had a plaque at its base which proclaimed in etched lettering: MENDEZ XXVI. Mendez the Twenty-Sixth! Brent wagged his head, to clear it of cobwebs.

At last the guards led him through another door.

Into another room.

And another nightmare. In broad daylight.

It was a room shaped like an amphitheater, with curved white walls, the hallway forming a well below. This was where Brent and the two guards stood, waiting for some kind of audience. At the head of the room, Brent could see the living replica of that last bust in the narrow passageway. The same smooth marble face, the luminous eyes, the glasslike rigidity. All of it enveloped in brilliant purple robes, lying like a shroud about the imposing figure of Mendez the Twenty-Sixth, as he sat like a judge presiding in some Supreme Court conclave of this incredible city. Brent stared up at the paradox of five robed inquisitor-rulers, sitting in carved chairs, regarding him with an impassivity of gaze that was bloodcurdling in its lack of human emotion. Brent held his ground, staring back. His eyes, which had been the most important part of his physical tools these last terrible hours, were now fully strung to the maximal pitch of their efficiency. Seeing was believing—but here, in this awful new world, it was also disbelieving. The senses, all five of them, could assimilate only so much.

His eyes swept over Mendez and his court.

He saw a magnificent Negro, robed all in white, his onyx face startling in contrast with his garments. He saw a mountainous fat man, serene and cool, garbed in red robes. To Mendez’s left, there was a woman—a strikingly beautiful woman, whose ivory face rose like an orchid from a gown of sheer blue. To Mendez’s right, a green-robed elder-statesman type—very much like the mysterious verger—squatted prominently. But unlike his companions, this one was almost charming and cheerful in demeanor. Brent was reminded of a Puck, grown to ancient years.

All five of these phantasmagorical figures struck Brent like some odd concatenation of Rembrandt’s famous
Syndics of the Cloth Guild.
With the terrible difference of an imposed horror. And the fantasy of the Unknown.

He waited, wondering, trying to control the fear moving like a snake in his stomach.

He didn’t realize that the five seated figures, looking down, could see him directly. Or that if they looked straight ahead, they could see, projected on the opposite wall, the visual impress of their own thought projections. Brent had no way of knowing into what technological wonderworld he had stumbled, though his encounter with the verger had given him some advance notice of the miracles to be found in this strange city.

Each “wall image” was projected in color to identify the sender. Thus, white for the Negro, blue for the beautiful girl, red for the fat man, green for the puckish statesman type. And purple for Mendez himself. This Brent was yet to learn, for he could not see the wall behind him.

Nor could he yet fully understand the traumatic hypnosis that the people of this civilization could inflict upon him. As they had done with him at the water fountain in that episode with Nova. Brent’s own stubbornness would bring on such an attack.

The practitioner merely had to close his eyes, project to the wall in his own color scheme, and Brent would remain in pain and agony until the particular inquisitor opened his eyes.

This was the mad world into which Brent had all unknowingly stumbled. The phenomenon of
A.D.
3955!

Brent felt himself the target of Mendez, the Negro, the woman, the fat man and the elder statesman.

He knew they were talking to him; he
felt
it even though he could hear no words, see no lips move, and knew nothing about the wall behind him with its color-scheme code of interrogation.

Mendez said nothing.

The fat man jerked his head ever so slightly.

The far wall lit up in red colors.

“Brent,” Brent answered.

The fat man jerked his head again.

“John Christopher,” Brent said politely. “And who are
you?”

Another jerk.

“I see—” Brent found himself understanding, in spite of the impossibility of it all. And the improbability. “You—are the only reality in the universe. Everything else is illusion. Well, that’s nice to know.”

The red colors flared on the opposite wall. The others said nothing.

“I got here by accident,” Brent explained to the fat man. “How did
you
get here?”

There was no answer from the fat man.

As the interview progressed, a pattern began to become very clear. The fat man probed for facts, the woman for emotional feelings, the elder statesman for beliefs and opinions. The Negro would ask no questions at all. He was there merely to induce pain; the catalyst for the workings of man’s conscience. Brent only sensed all this. He could not have said where the knowledge came from.

Mendez sat through it all, implacable as a Buddha.

The elder statesman now jerked his head, his genial smile almost benevolent. But only
almost.

It was like being caught in a cross-fire of four machine guns. Only you could not hear the whine and twang of bullets. Only the ferocity of the assault hit you like some withering invisible hail of terror.

Openmouthed, Brent once more answered.

“You’re way off. Why should I want to
spy
on you? Personally, I’m not even sure you exist.” It was true. Was it all a bad dream? Would he awaken on the reconnaissance spacecraft to find Skipper poking him to get up?

The puckish inquisitor jerked his head.

“Certainly I know who I am,” Brent rasped impatiently. “I’m an astronaut. I’m here because I’m lost.”

No surprise showed on the five faces up above him. Only a sudden interest. Mendez’s eyes glistened like a cat’s.

The fat man again jerked his head.

“From this planet,” Brent answered him. “But from another time. Two thousand years ago.”

There was still no surprise evident. Only that deepening of interest in the marble faces above him.

“I know, it sounds insane. But if so, it’s
my
insanity, not yours. So I can abolish you—all of you—anytime I choose.”

They all smiled at that. Benevolently. Matching the elder statesman’s habitual facade.

Brent bit his lip.

He could not see the opposite wall.

The inquisitors had projected, in their various color schemes, a montage of all that had happened.

An image of Taylor, looking like some prehistoric Tarzan, with a bedraggled Nova-Eve in tow, was shown approaching buried New York. The last shot left him striking the wall of ice and vanishing into its wilderness, with Nova screaming behind him.

“No, I don’t know how to get back,” Brent almost mumbled, still oblivious of the story on the wall. “We came through a defect—a kind of slipping in Time itself.”

He caught himself, feeling a wave of self-pity swamping him. “My skipper died. I’m alone.”

Instantly, the images of Taylor and the girl on the wall vanished. They were supplanted by five images of Nova all by herself, wandering in the desert wilderness. And then—

She was projected in all of the inquisitorial colors:

The fat man saw her pulling herself through the octagonal vent. A burst of flaming red.

The beautiful woman saw her asleep in Brent’s arms on the bench in the public square. A shimmering blue ocean of color.

Mendez saw her hammering on the outside of the cathedral’s double door. A purple flash of violence.

The elder statesman envisioned her being seized and removed by the guards on duty in the strange city. A twisting garland of green.

Only the Negro’s wall remained colorless. Bare, blank and white.

The beautiful woman in blue jerked her lovely face.

Brent was instantly on the defensive.

“Who?” he hesitated.

The woman jerked again.

“Nova?” Brent lied. “What’s that? A star? A galaxy?” His heart pounded with sudden alarm for the girl.

At that, the Negro shut his eyes.

Brent cried out. A poker-hot inferno ignited his skull. His brain revolved in stunning flashes of agony. He went down to his knees, tears coming to his eyes. The Negro opened his eyes. Slowly.

Gradually, painfully, Brent straightened. The agony had left as suddenly as it had come.

“I know her—yes . . .”

Silence greeted that.

Brent lost his temper, shouting, “She’s harmless! Let her alone!”

The Negro closed his eyes again.

Rivets of white-hot pain hit Brent from every direction. He went down again, writhing as his entire body was stitched and needled with agonizing pinpricks. He clutched his stomach as if he had been poisoned. His vitals were on fire. His face twisted, his tongue lolled. “All right—” the breath forced itself from his lungs. “I’ll—tell you!”

Smiling, the Negro opened his beautiful eyes.

The woman jerked her head again.

“I didn’t find her,” Brent gasped. “She found me.”

Again, a jerk.

“Two days ago.”

Another jerk.

“Don’t be crude,” Brent groaned. “I’m fond of her. And grateful . . .”

The beautiful woman arched her head once more.

“Because she helped me!”

Another tilt of that lovely face.

“To break out of Ape City.”

All five of the faces looming over him leaned forward. Now all of the heads twitched in unison. Brent’s hands shot to his ears. They were engulfing him from all sides, attacking on every front of his personality and intelligence.

“Stop!” he begged. “I can’t understand—can’t separate—you’re all screaming at me—at the same time! Please . . .”

He groveled, still blocking his ears in order to hear nothing more. Suddenly, incredibly, the face of Mendez softened. His rubbery lips parted and a deep, mellifluous voice sounded in the chamber of new horrors. Brent stared up at him in amazement.

“He’s right,” Mendez said. “He has only limited intelligence. We should speak aloud. And one at a time. Albina.” He looked at the strikingly beautiful woman in blue.

The woman stared down at Brent, her impeccable face almost kind and sympathetic. But it was the illusion of her beauty and her rich, deep tones.

“Are we to apprehend,” she said, soothingly, “that you—were in the City of the Apes . . . ?”

Brent, tremendously gratified though nothing had changed, nodded eagerly. The chamber didn’t seem so terrifying any more.

“Yes. Two days ago.”

The fat man intervened. “What did you see?”

Brent dodged that, side-stepping the question.

“You’re talking . . .”

The elder statesman nodded cheerfully. “Certainly, we can all talk. A rather primitive accomplishment. We use it when we have to. I, Caspay, consider it a vulgar thing.”

“When we pray,” the fat man interjected again.

“When we sing to God,” the Negro said fervently.

Then all of them, all five on the dais, made the hateful Sign of the Bomb. Brent winced, in memory of that sleek monster atop the high altar of the cathedral.
St. Patrick’s—my God!

“Your God—what a joke! You worship something we made two thousand years ago. An atom bomb!”

The fat man heaved a long and ponderous sigh. The folds of his fat stomach wriggled beneath his red robes.

“Ah. You’ve seen the Bomb, Mr. Brent.”

“Above the altar in your cathedral. An obscenity . . .”

All the inquisitors rose as one in response to his heated indignation. Their faces were ominous. Even Caspay was no longer smiling. Regal Mendez rose like a lean colossus, his eyes flashing.

“Mr. Brent, you have beheld God’s instrument on Earth!” he intoned majestically. He motioned his fellow inquisitors to be seated. He alone remained standing.

He looked down at Brent.

“For it is written that, in the First Year of the Bomb—the blessing of the Holy Fallout descended from above . .

“What kind of nonsense is that?” Brent interrupted harshly. Mendez ignored him.