CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO
I am stupefied without yet fully realizing what this news implies. At first I am assailed by a mass of trivial details and above all tormented by the disquieting question: why was I not notified of this? Zira does not give me time to protest.
“I noticed two months ago, on my return from the trip. The gorillas had not seen a thing. I phoned Cornelius, who had a long conversation with the administrator. They agreed that it would be better to keep it secret. No one knows about it except them and me. She’s in an isolated cage and I’m looking after her personally.”
I regard this concealment as an act of treachery on Cornelius’ part and I can see that Zira is embarrassed. It looks to me as though some plot is being hatched in the background.
“Don’t worry. She is being well treated and there’s nothing she needs. I’m doing everything I can for her. No pregnancy of a female human has ever been so carefully watched over.”
Under her mocking gaze I lower my eyes like a schoolboy guilty of some misdemeanor. She makes an effort to assume an ironical tone, but I can see she is perturbed. True, I realize my physical intimacy with Nova has vexed her ever since she recognized my true nature, but there is more than vexation in her expression. It is her affection for me that makes her anxious. These mysteries concerning Nova presage nothing good. I imagine she has not told me the whole truth: that the Grand Council is well aware of the situation and there have been discussions at a very high level.
“When is her confinement due?”
“In three or four months.”
The tragi-comic side of the situation overwhelms me suddenly. I am about to become a father in the system of Betelgeuse. I am going to have a child on the planet Soror by a woman for whom I feel a great physical attraction and sometimes even compassion but who has the mind of an animal. No other being in the cosmos has found himself involved in such an adventure. I feel like weeping and laughing at the same time.
“Zira, I want to see her!”
She gives a little pout of annoyance.
“I knew you would ask me that. I’ve already discussed it with Cornelius and I think he will agree to it. He’s waiting for you in his office.”
“Cornelius is a traitor!”
“You’ve no right to say that. He is divided between his passion for science and his duty as an ape. It is only natural that he should feel extremely apprehensive at this impending birth.”
My anguish increases as I follow her down the corridors of the institute. I can imagine the attitude of the learned apes and their fear of seeing a new race arise that— Good heavens! I now see exactly how the mission with which I have been entrusted can be accomplished.
Cornelius greets me in a friendly manner, but a permanent awkwardness has been created between us. At times he looks at me as though in terror. I make an effort not to broach the subject on my mind at once. I ask him about the voyage and the end of his stay among the ruins.
“Fascinating. I have a mass of irrefutable proof.”
His clever little eyes are sparkling. He cannot prevent himself from exulting over his success. Zira is right; he is torn between his love of science and his duty as an ape. At the moment it is the scientist speaking, the enthusiastic scientist for whom only the triumph of his theories counts.
“Skeletons,” he says. “Not one, but a whole collection, discovered in such order and circumstances as to make it incontestably clear that we had come upon a graveyard. Enough evidence to convince the most obtuse mind. Our orangutans, of course, insist on regarding it as a mere coincidence.”
“What about these skeletons?”
“They are not simian.”
“I see.”
We look each other straight in the eye. With his enthusiasm somewhat diminished, he slowly continues, “I can’t hide it from you; you’ve already guessed. They are the skeletons of men.”
Zira is certainly in the know, for she shows no surprise. Both of them again observe me closely. Cornelius finally makes up his mind to discuss the matter frankly.
“I am now certain,” he admits, “that there once existed on our planet a race of human beings endowed with a mind comparable to yours and to that of the men who populate your Earth, a race that has degenerated and reverted to an animal state. . . . Furthermore, since my return here I have been given additional evidence to support this hypothesis.”
“Additional evidence?”
“Yes. It was discovered by the director of the encephalic section, a young chimpanzee with a great future. He may even be a genius. . . . You would be wrong to think,” he continued with heavy sarcasm, “that apes have always been imitators. We have made some remarkable innovations in certain branches of science, especially in connection with these experiments on the brain. I’ll show you the results some day, if I can. I’m sure you’ll be amazed by them.”
He seems anxious to convince himself and expresses himself with unusual aggressiveness. I have never attacked him on this point. He was the one who first mentioned the lack of creative faculty in apes, two months ago. In a boastful tone he continues:
“Believe me, the day will come when we shall surpass men in every field. It is not just by accident, as you might imagine, that we have managed to succeed them. This result was foreordained in the normal course of evolution. Rational man having had his day, a superior being was bound to succeed him, preserve the essential results of his conquests, and assimilate them during a period of apparent stagnation before soaring up to even greater heights.”
This is a new way of visualizing the outcome. I might well retort that many men on Earth have had the presentiment of a superior being who may one day succeed them but that no scientist, philosopher, or poet has ever imagined this superhuman in the guise of an ape. But I do not feel inclined to pursue the point. The essential, after all, is that the mind should embody itself in some organism. The form of the latter is of little importance. I have many other more pressing subjects. I bring the conversation around to Nova and her condition. He makes no comment and tries to console me.
“Don’t worry. It will be all right, I hope. It will probably be a child like any other human child on Soror.”
“I certainly hope not. I’m convinced it will talk!” I cannot help protesting indignantly. Zira gives a frown to make me keep quiet.
“Don’t be too hopeful,” Cornelius solemnly says, “for her sake and for your own.”
He adds in a friendlier tone, “If he talked, I don’t know if I should be able to go on protecting you as I do. Don’t you realize that the Grand Council is on tenterhooks and that I’ve been given the strictest orders to keep this birth a secret? If the authorities discovered you knew all about it, I should be dismissed, so would Zira, and you’d find yourself alone among . . .”
“Among enemies?”
He turns his head away. That is exactly what I thought: I am regarded as a danger to the simian race. Nevertheless, I am happy to feel I have an ally in Cornelius, if not a friend. Zira must have pleaded my cause more fervently than she gave me to understand, and he will do nothing that might displease her. He gives me permission to go and see Nova—in secret, of course.
Zira leads me to an isolated little building to which she alone holds the key. The room into which she shows me is not very big. It “contains only three cages, two of which are empty. Nova occupies the third. She has heard us coming and her instinct has warned her of my presence, for she has risen to her feet and stretched out her arms even before seeing me. I clasp her hands and rub my face against hers. Zira gives a contemptuous shrug, but she hands me the key of the cage and goes to keep watch outside in the corridor. What a good soul this she-ape is! What woman would have been capable of such tact? She knows we must have a lot of things to say to each other and therefore leaves us to ourselves.
A lot of things to say? Alas! I have again forgotten Nova’s miserable condition. I rush into the cage and fling my arms around her. I speak to her as though she is able to understand—as I might speak to Zira, for instance.
Does she not understand? Does she not have at least a vague intuition of the mission for which both of us are responsible from now on, she as well as I?
I lie down on the straw by her side. I stroke the incipient fruit of our outlandish passion. It seems to me nonetheless that her present condition has given her a personality and dignity she did not have before. She trembles as I pass my fingers over her stomach. Her eyes have certainly acquired a new intensity. Suddenly, with a great effort, she stammers out the syllables of my name, which I have taught her to articulate. She has-not forgotten her lessons. I am overwhelmed with joy. But her eye dulls again and she turns aside to devour the fruit I have brought her.
Zira comes back; it is time to say good-by. I leave with her. Sensing my feeling of loss, she accompanies me back to my apartment where I burst into tears like a child.
“Oh Zira, Zira!”
While she cradles me in her arms like a mother, I begin to speak to her, to speak to her with affection, without stopping, relieving myself at last of the surfeit of emotions and thoughts that Nova is unable to appreciate.