Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (8 page)

“Absolutely. It’s the only possible explanation,” Hasslein answered. He leaned forward to peer intently into the camera, and to the apes watching him on the screen he seemed almost to come into the room.

“He—frightens me,” Zira said.

“Well he might,” Lewis told her. “But you’ve got to get along with him. Oh, the entire Commission could probably overrule him, if we wanted to badly enough; but the president listens to Hasslein. Don’t blame the president, you understand. Hasslein’s brilliant, and he has a talent for explaining complicated subjects to educated laymen. Just remember, you’ve
got
to get along with him.”

“Shh,” Stevie said. She put her hand on his lips and grinned. She had been waiting to do that for a while—since Lewis had shushed her.

“I’m afraid, Dr. Hasslein,” the interviewer was saying, “that I don’t find it at all obvious what the ape meant. How could they be from our future? Is time travel actually possible?”

Hasslein smiled thinly. “Walter, there will be nothing simple about this explanation. I do not myself actually understand time, although I have written papers about its nature, mathematical papers. Men will probably never understand time. Only God can do that. But perhaps I can give an illustration, of something I call infinite regression—”

The interviewer winced, but Hasslein smiled. “It is not that difficult, Walter,” he said. “Remember the Morton’s Salt Box? On it there is a little girl carrying a box of Morton’s salt. On
her
box there is a little girl, also carrying a box of Morton’s salt. And so forth, until, of course, the engraver became tired and did not bother to make the actual detailed picture within a picture within a picture . . .”

“I suppose,” the interviewer said. He looked sharply at Hasslein, and the look said quite a lot. It said, “Whoever told me this guy knew what he was talking about?”

“The same was true of the old Quaker Oats boxes,” Hasslein said. “On those boxes was a man holding a box of Quaker Oats, and so forth. Now, let us see this in a different direction. Let us imagine a landscape painting. In order for it to be realistic, the painter would have to place himself in the painting, would he not? Otherwise something would be missing?”

“Why—yes.”

Hasslein smiled. “Excellent. But of course, now, in order for it to be realistic, the painting within the painting would itself have to contain a picture of the artist painting a picture of the artist painting a picture of the landscape. And, in fact, I that is not quite realistic either, is it? One would have to regress again. And again, and again—”

“It would never be accurate,” the interviewer exclaimed.

“Perhaps not,” Hasslein said. “But in order to understand time, you would have to be like the artist who had done an infinite series of such paintings until he had actually succeeded in portraying the scene realistically.”

“That’s enough to drive you mad,” the interviewer said.

Hasslein shrugged. “Perhaps. But let us imagine, then, that we have this capability. That we have made the, ah, infinite regression, and we are both the observers and the observed. And now let us look at time.”

“What would we see?” Walter asked.

“We might well see it as an infinity of parallel events, but not always parallel. Science fiction writers once called this, ah, ‘fan-shaped’ time; from ‘now’ there stretches forward a large number of alternative pathways. Some come back to the same path. Others lead very far away indeed. And thus, the choices made here determine different futures. In one of these futures, you will leave this building at eight-fifteen, precisely in time to be killed by an automobile which left the parking garage at eight-twelve.”

“I think I do not care for that future,” Walter said nervously. He laughed.

“Yes, but in another, you may leave here at eight-sixteen, and be perfectly safe,” Hasslein said. “Or the automobile does not leave the parking garage until eight-twenty because the driver received a telephone call. Yet, and this is the important point, each of those futures may be as real as any other.”

“But we wouldn’t experience more than one of those futures, would we, Dr. Hasslein?” the interviewer asked. He was now thoroughly confused.

“Certainly not,” Hasslein said. “Yet, each one would be real to the mythical observer who has achieved infinite regression. Now, I do not find it at all hard to believe that these apes have arrived here from one of the possible futures of this planet. To them, that future was very real. But, and I want to stress this, it need not be real to
us.
We can, perhaps, change that future. And indeed, I think it important that we do.”

“Well come back to Dr. Victor Hasslein as the Big News continues following station identification,” Walter said. “Now an important message.”

“I wish Milo had been here to explain that,” Zira said. She looked sadly around the cage.

“I am Chiquita Banana, and I’ve come to say, Bananas must be ripened in—”

Cornelius flung himself at the set and turned off the sound.

“That’s all we needed,” Zira said.

“Inappropriate,” Lewis agreed. “I suppose I should have expected it.”

Cornelius took a bunch of grapes from the table and passed them around. “Have some, dear,” he said. He gave Zira most of them. They ate in silence until the commercials were over, and Cornelius turned the sound back on.

“The Big News continues. This reporter will confess that he was impressed by the Ape-onauts, and I certainly applaud the president’s decision to transfer them from the Los Angeles Zoo to a hotel. They are no danger to us, and from what I’ve seen, they will be our friends.

“In other late breaking stories, criminals struck at a Los Angeles Savings and Loan for the third . . .”

Lewis switched off the set. “Congratulations,” he told them.

Zira and Cornelius smiled happily. “We won’t be sorry to leave,” Cornelius said. He looked around the cage, and at the place where Milo died. “We won’t be sorry at all.”

Lewis Dixon found the next week unbelievably hectic. First, there was the escorted ride to the Beverly Hills Hotel. The Navy had locked the chimpanzees into a zoo. Now that they were released, Admiral Taylor had been determined to make amends.

He had persuaded a wealthy retired admiral friend to come for the chimpanzees in a chauffered Mercedes. The City of Los Angeles had provided a motorcycle escort. Navy Intelligence provided a bodyguard. And the general public had provided the crowds.

Not only was attendance at the Los Angeles Zoo twice the previous record crowd on the day the chimpanzees were to move, but the whole Griffith Park road system was crowded with sightseers. Los Feliz Boulevard was nearly impassable, so that the motorcade finally had to go out the back way, past Forest Lawn of Hollywood Hills, down Ventura Boulevard and up over Laurel Canyon. These streets were normal enough until the motorcade passed—then people fell in behind, until Dixon and his charges were leading a parade five miles long, and had created the worst clear weather traffic jam in Los Angeles history.

It was as bad at the hotel. Of course the apes weren’t used to automobiles in the first place, or escalators, or elevators, or automatically opening doors. All these things confused them. So did doormen with their elaborate uniforms and their deferential attitude.

At the registration desk the clerk had asked the apes for their permanent address.

Cornelius shrugged. So did Dixon. Finally Stevie had said, “If you have to write something, put down the Los Angeles Zoo.”

The registration clerk had looked down his aristocratic nose and said calmly, “Madam, the Beverly Hills does not have guests who reside in a zoo.” What he wrote was anybody’s guess, but the clerk was the only one there who didn’t think it funny.

The apes had one of the best suites in the hotel. And that, Lewis thought, was going to be a problem. Sure it was authorized, but it cost more than Dixon’s entire department budget. If Lewis could have thought of a way to transfer any of that money to his research, he would have insisted on the apes taking a less expensive place; but there wasn’t any way to do it. There was money to put the apes into the best suite of the Beverly Hills, but none for a new electron microscope.

One of these days, the Navy was going to decide not to pay for that suite. And then who would be responsible? Lewis wondered. At least it wasn’t a problem now.

There was also the question of the mail and gifts. Hundreds of thousands of letters poured in, and literally thousands of packages. Most of the packages contained toys, balls, art work, decorative jewelry; but they had to be inspected, because some of the people out there had sick minds. Not only were there bombs, but other ugly and disgusting things.

All that mail had to be sorted, and answered, and the people doing that had to be paid. For a while the University of California had undertaken the task, justifying it as a special experimental project; but Lewis didn’t think that would last. He sighed. Well, the apes could afford their own help, of course. They could command their own fees for speaking engagements, and Lewis had arranged a few, along with some appearances on TV programs. The fees went into the UC budget system in a special category, the money reserved for the chimpanzees.

“Is that fair?” Stevie had asked.

Lewis shrugged. He hadn’t known how to answer her a week ago when she asked, and, he thought, I still don’t know. Can chimps legally own money? Would the courts uphold any rights at all? Certainly the university can be trusted to hold onto some of the money for them, and give it to them when they need it. I guess that’ll have to do until we find out what legal status these apes have. It hadn’t satisfied Stevie and it didn’t satisfy him, but it was all the answer Lewis Dixon had.

Lewis had observed the chimpanzees closely as they moved into the hotel. They were obviously unused to technology. The flush toilet had startled Cornelius, and Lewis made a note to inquire what kind of sanitary facilities the apes were used to. The refrigerator had been an even bigger surprise. Cornelius explained that apes packed ice in straw for the winter, much as humans had done when the Americas were first settled. It had been amusing to watch Cornelius play with the refrigerator; he liked to open the door quickly to see if he could fool the light that came on.

“Milo would have been impressed,” Cornelius said.

“I doubt it,” Lewis told him. “Refrigerators are pretty simple compared to spacecraft. If Milo understood the ship, he would have had no problems with this.”

Cornelius shrugged. “Still and all, Lewis, it is a bit overwhelming. Much of this machinery is totally unfamiliar to me, yet I was, after all, an archeological historian. I knew that human civilization had possessed many of these marvels. The humans had also used up nearly all the energy sources so that, no matter how much the ape scientists might know, we simply could not develop a machine civilization again. Not that we really wanted to, you understand.”

“I see.”

“I have not made my point,” Cornelius said. “I meant to say that I am at least not surprised by the existence of all this; but the same is probably not true for my wife. Oh, certainly, we all knew that humans had machines, and I often spoke of my work to her; but I would not be surprised if she found much of this a bit overwhelming.”

And he was certainly right, Lewis Dixon thought. Zira was perpetually startled by this civilization—toothbrushes, which she thought a bit small to use as hairbrushes; high-heeled shoes, which she thought ridiculous. Sometimes, watching her, it was difficult for Lewis to remember that the apes weren’t primitive at all; not in the way he was tempted to think. Machinery wasn’t everything.

Future shock with a vengeance, Lewis thought. Add to it the knowledge that their world is destroyed and they can never go home. Realize that they are all alone here on Earth and always will be, that there will never be any others of their own kind; and the question is inevitable. Are these chimpanzees quite sane?

I certainly wouldn’t be, Dixon thought. The culture shock of this machine civilization would be enough to put me off my hinges. Or knowing I was alone and always would be. Any of it would be enough to drive almost any normal human stark staring mad—yet the apes don’t seem very upset at all. They’ve adjusted to tailors, automobiles, TV, telephones, refrigerators, and flush toilets, and they’re still at it. This should make a fascinating book when I have finished with the study.

Another press conference was about to begin. It was the tenth, or eleventh, for the chimpanzees; Lewis Dixon couldn’t remember which. The big, important publications had been dealt with, or wanted so much time for depth interviews that scheduling was difficult; now came the turn for the specialty magazines and papers. Lewis and Stevie waited in the living room of the suite until Cornelius led Zira out.

“Hey, you look nice,” Lewis said. The first time be had seen Zira in a high-necked maxi-skirt cocktail dress he had been unable to restrain himself, and his laughter had been embarrassing. The embarrassment hadn’t lasted long, though; when Zira modeled the clothes for Cornelius, her husband had found the whole thing even funnier than Dixon had.

Only Stephanie sympathized. Apparently women chimpanzees weren’t a lot different from human females when it came to clothing. Stevie hadn’t seen anything to laugh about at all.

“How many reporters do we have this time?” Zira asked.

“Not many. Two or three,” Lewis said. There was a knock at the door, and when he answered it, a room service waiter came in with a tray of glasses and a bottle of champagne.

“I didn’t order this,” Lewis said.

“Compliments of the house,” the waiter said. “I’ll put this second bottle in the refrigerator. The manager thought you might like some refreshments between press conferences.”

“Yes, we would, thank you.” Lewis took the tray and gave the waiter a tip. He poured for each and raised his glass. “Here’s to the most popular apes in the world.”

They all lifted their glasses and drank. “Hey, not so much. You sip champagne,” Lewis told Zira. “Don’t gulp it!”

“It’s very good,” Zira said. “What is it?”