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The sign on the door said HUMANOID BEHAVIORAL STUDIES LABORATORY. The building the door was set in was a large one, with many rooms, cells, storage rooms, and equipment-filled experimental labs. A few gorilla guards were assigned to the lab, all of them surly and resentful about the duty, for they thought their rightful place was out with the Ape Army, not guarding and feeding a bunch of animals.
But the laboratory was Cornelius and Zira's favorite place, even better than their small but nice home. It was here that their interest lay, and they resented any situation that took them away from it.
A day or so after the army's return, Cornelius crossed the grassy knoll from the last of the Ape City residences to the grounds of the laboratory, a bottle of Dr. Zaius's favorite fruit drink in his hand. He entered the lab, ignoring the gorilla guards lounging inside as they ignored him. He went directly into the main lab, where great round cages stood on stone risers, and saw Dr. Zaius standing with Zira before the cage in which they had put the pale-skinned, blue-eyed humanoid. As a smartness award, they'd given him a T-shirt and trousers.
Zaius was looking doubtful, but Zira was talking to him excitedly. "I tell you it's true! Blue-Eyes has turned out to be a truly extraordinary specimen!"
The orangutan leader looked again at the 20th Century expatriate, who stared back, still watching without speaking, but less startled now. The astronaut sensed danger and felt that some measure of safety might lie in imitating the mute humanoids, which the apes all treated, as if they were beneath notice.
Zira tugged Zaius's sleeve and said earnestly, "His pattern-response tests, his mathematical comprehension, his manual dexterity are simply remarkable." She looked at Steve Burton and added, in a quieter and somewhat puzzled tone, "It's almost as if he understood....as if he was....intelligent....even patronizing me, during all the tests."
"Now, Zira," Cornelius said carefully, eyeing Dr. Zaius as he spoke, "aren't you getting just a little bit carried away?"
Zira threw him a quick, fierce look. "Not at all, beloved. I've been working with humanoids for years. I know what I saw."
Zaius cleared his throat and stroked his chin whiskers thoughtfully. His eyes slid sideways to look at Zira. "You make the beast seem almost as smart as we apes, Zira....."
Zira returned his look with startled eyes. "Oh, Dr. Zaius, I didn't mean to imply that...."
Zaius laughed kindly and spoke to Zira in a patronizing voice. "Well, then, my dear Zira, why don't you have the beast demonstrate his 'brilliance' to us."
All too familiar with Zaius's patronizing tone, the one he used to humiliate and control those beneath him---as if they didn't have the sense to come in out of the cold----she nodded in agreement. "It will be my pleasure, Dr. Zaius...."
As Zaius chuckled indulgently, Zira walked to a closed wooden cabinet and opened its carved doors to take out a flat box made of painted wood. In the top of the box was a series of round, square, and triangular holes, the borders of which were painted different colors. She picked up another plain box containing a number of colored pegs that had ends that were round, square, or triangular. Then she took both to Steve's cage, where he squatted, watching everything with intense curiosity.
Zira handed the box with the holes through the steel bars to Steve, who took it automatically. Then she dumped the pegs onto the cell floor next to him.
"Okay, Blue-Eyes, show these hardheaded simians how smart you are!" she said, looking triumphantly at Dr. Zaius, who was watching with shrewd, slitted eyes.
The blond aviator smiled, looked at each of the apes beyond the bars, and reached for a peg. Quickly, without a single mistake, and without hesitation, Steve fitted each colored peg into the correct hole.
The apes all watched his hands in amazement, not noticing the wry smile that tugged at his mouth.
Steve plugged the last peg into the last hole and gazed up, smiling broadly. The whole thing was amusing to him----almost a practical joke.
As he started to speak, Cornelius blurted out loudly, "Amazing!" He looked up from the board and smiled happily at his wife.
But she was looking at the orangutan Elder.
Dr. Zaius spoke slowly, and with weight. "Impressive."
Zira waved her hand airily. "That's nothing! You should see his mathematical aptitude."
She was beginning to give a lecture on the methods used to test humanoids and on the astounding abilities of Blue-Eyes, when Dr. Zaius stopped her with a raised hand.
"I'd like to stay and watch, Zira," he said, "but I have an important meeting in the Council of Elders, for which I am already a bit late."
The chimpanzee scientist fluttered her hands to stop him. "Please, Dr. Zaius! You'll be amazed, I promise!"
Zaius continued his shambling walk toward the door. "No doubt, Zira, but duty calls. My first responsibility is to all Apekind as a whole. Good evening."
Zira and Cornelius looked after him with saddened faces.
"I wish he could have stayed," Zira sighed plaintively.
"If Blue-Eyes is truly as brilliant as he appears, then I suggest we arrange a detailed surgical probe of his prefrontal cortex," Cornelius remarked to Zira. "That region may well hold the secrets of his unusual intellect."
Steve's head came up with a snap. He kicked the box of pegs violently as he rose. The box struck the bars, scattering the pieces in every direction. Zira and Cornelius looked at him with surprise, watching him grip the steel bars with whitened knuckles.
They were not prepared, however, for what happened next.
"Operate on my brain?!" Steve shouted. "The hell you will!"
Steve's ability to speak so shocked the two simians that they fell back in fear and shock, their expressions incredulous and stunned.
Cornelius stammered and his eyes bulged in shock. "It---it---it s-spoke! Z-Zira, the h-humanoid---spoke!"
She stood with a hand over her mouth, slightly bent as if she had just received a gut punch. She had had the shock of her life, and her agile brain was searching for a rational explanation. But she was disoriented and couldn't have been more shocked if a stone had said "Good morning!" to her.
Steve struck at the cage bars with the heel of his hand. "Yes, I spoke, you hairy circus freaks! I spoke because I can speak!"
Zira's eyes blinked rapidly, and now her initial shock was being overcome by her scientific curiosity. In a hushed voice she said, to herself, "A talking....a talking....humanoid...."
Steve stood tall, taller than the simians, and he rattled the steel bars of his cage angrily. All the amusement he'd felt earlier was gone, all the surprise had evaporated. Now he was angry.
"A talking human, you monsters! A human whose world has been turned upside down, but a talking, reasoning, human being, nevertheless!"
Cornelius was still frozen, flabbergasted. He stared in dumb shock, his gaze going from the caged Steve to Zira, who was slowly moving toward the prisoner with hesitant little steps.
"But how...?" Cornelius mumbled, his voice wavering. "Who... who are you? Uh..." His words trailed off as his chin trembled with the shock of accepting that Steve could speak. Forcing himself to come to terms with the impossibility, he finally asked, "Do you have a name?"
Unseen by any of them, a gorilla guard was standing just beyond an inner door. He'd been about to enter, hearing the clatter of the pegs when Steve had scattered them, but when Steve's deep voice had thundered out, he had stopped to listen and to peer cautiously around the door. This was just what his commanding officer had warned him to watch out for. HIs ears now tuned with careful attention.
"My name is Steve Burton," the light-haired aviator said. "Listen, Zira, Cornelius—this may sound impossible, but I'm from Earth's past. I'm not just a visitor from another time; I'm one of the very ancestors of these so-called humanoids. Everything you know of humanity, every spark of civilization you see, began with my kind. Our destinies are intertwined, and the legacy of my people lives on in every human you encounter."
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