Beneath the Planet of the Apes - Avallone Michael. Страница 27

His eyes hardened into flints. His tears dried up.

This world, whatever it was, would have to pay for Nova!

B, C and D Company of the ape army had solved the various complexities of the many and different air tunnels leading into the center of the leaders’ domain. All companies, jubilant, armed and prepared for slaughter, moved in for the kill.

From convergent directions.

General Ursus’ militia was functioning like a well-oiled machine. Victory was in sight.

In the Corridor of Busts, Dr. Zaius stood staring at the impressive rows of sculpted heads depicting the Mendez Dynasty. His intelligent nostrils were curled in disgust. He looked down the row of busts on their plinths and saw where the Inquisition Room began. The door. The bust of Mendez I heightened Zaius’ distaste.

With Zaius was a gorilla sergeant, machine gun at the ready. Ursus had gone off somewhere, with bigger plans in his head. Zaius shivered, looking at the stone idols. “They’re obscene,” he muttered. The sergeant made no comment, but kept his eyes peeled, on the alert.

Zaius suddenly knocked Mendez I off his gleaming plinth. The bust crashed to the floor, shattering. Methodically, grimly, Dr. Zaius moved down the line, striking out, pushing, breaking. One by one, the stone history of the Mendez Dynasty broke apart in scattered, useless fragments. With great enthusiasm, Zaius finally reached the end of the stone line. Mendez XXVI. The last bust disintegrated on the floor in a shower of chips.

As it too smashed, a woman’s scream, muffled but agonizing, sounded from beyond the door of the Inquisition Room.

The sergeant brushed by Dr. Zaius, batted the wall button and plunged in. Zaius followed him, curious.

They found Albina.

She lay sprawled in her lovely blue robes in a curved chair before the wall screen. A small phial was clutched in her outstretched hand. Her lovely face, even in death, was as stunningly beautiful as ever. Zaius scooped up the phial, put it to his nose and sniffed. The sergeant could not take his eyes off the beauty of Albina nor the ample spill of her nearly bared breasts in the blue robes. She was still bewitching.

“She’s dead,” Zaius said, without inflection.

He turned away, leaving the sergeant to ogle Albina while he studied the strange room. The wall caught his interest . . .

When he turned back it was to see the sergeant’s hairy paw on Albina’s unmoving breast. The sergeant was greatly agitated, sexually stimulated. Zaius hid his disgust for all gorillas. Animals!

“Sergeant,” he said mildly.

The ape withdrew his hand.

Dr. Zaius continued to study the Inquisition Room.

There was a lot to be learned here.

He could see that, too.

The great double doors of the cathedral reverberated with the crescendo thud of an ape-wielded battering ram. General Ursus stood back as his armed troops broke down the mighty doors. In the cathedral square, ape companies had converged until they now totaled nearly three hundred strong. General Ursus was proud and happy. Victory was in the air.

The war was going well!

There had been an interesting diversion on the way to the cathedral. A bit of sport. For himself and his gorilla squads of highly efficient soldiers.

In the stone plaza outside the church, they had encountered three robed figures hurrying across the square. A huge fat man encased in scarlet robes, an elder-statesman type in brilliant green, and a tall, lean, hooded man. These had been, of course, the fat man, Caspay and the verger. General Ursus had not even bothered to halt them to ask questions. Rather, he had raised one authoritative paw and the machine gunners flanking him had done their specialty. A withering, blasting, raking crossfire of a thousand bullets which had seemed to pluck up the robed figures and send them skittering like puppets along the hard earth until the guns had closed down. General Ursus had never seen, in all his military past, such effectiveness of machine gun fire on mere flesh. The dull, bleak buildings bordering the plaza, with their curious starkness and contrasting moldiness and fresh stone architecture, had shown no signs of life. The streets and the alleys of this tomblike metropolis had been curiously empty.

Save for the three hurrying figures in robes.

General Ursus had not been disposed to take them prisoner to ask them questions. He somehow felt that the imposing edifice of the cathedral held all the answers he might need to know.

In any case, the machine gun exercise had been a necessary tactic for his troops. Lest their fingers grow stale from disuse.

Ursus hardly gave the bullet-riddled, blood-soaked corpses a second look as he trundled up to the mighty double doors at the head of his troops. He felt an imminent end to this war.

Genuine resistance had been virtually nil. These people, whatever they were, were certainly no warriors!

He had waited for Dr. Zaius to join him at this hour of ultimate conquest. Still smarting from the heroics of Zaius on the plain, before the whole of his Grand Army, Ursus was anxious to get some of his own back. And now was the time.

The great doors of the cathedral unhinged, broken open by the force of the ram. General Ursus and his troops piled through the new opening. Dr. Zaius accompanied them.

With nearly three hundred elite gorilla troops behind him, General Ursus stalked into the cathedral proudly. Mightily. The great dim hall lay in gloom. Only the half light of the prie-dieu on the high altar showed any illumination. Ursus moved toward this, his troops and Zaius following. Their feet made gobbling echoes in the gigantic nave.

There was only one man in the cathedral.

Mendez. The Twenty-Sixth.

Dr. Zaius recognized the glasslike, marble-like face.

The altar screens were closed behind Mendez. In his purple robes, Mendez awaited his conquerors.

Ursus and Zaius, flanked by gorilla machine gunners, stalked up the nave to a point midway where Ursus imperiously motioned for a halt. Mendez did not move. His face was impassive in the dim light.

“Arrest that—creature,” Ursus commanded the guards. “And bring it to me.”

The guards moved forward, machine guns leveled, reaching the sanctuary.

Behind the prie-dieu, Mendez pressed the emerald button on the panel board. It glowed green.

The altar screens parted noiselessly. The guards looked up, hesitating. And in the moment of their indecision, Mendez’s powerful voice filled the cathedral, echoing off the vaulted ceiling.

“This is the instrument of my God.”

The first guard recoiled, batting his eyes at his partner.

“He can speak!”

Mendez pressed the second button on the bejeweled panel. The topaz one. It glowed yellow.

General Ursus snorted, angry with the delay. He started forward, snarling, “Your God . . .!”

Spurred by his voice, the guards seized Mendez, attempting to drag him off the high altar. Zaius caught his breath in a gasp of wonderment. And new knowledge.

The Bomb was in view.

Resplendent, frightening, all mighty, its sinister fins and snoutlike nose magnificently awesome. It had begun to rise—very very slowly, in response to the mechanism triggered by the topaz button. And now, as it would have been obvious to Taylor and Brent, the Bomb was poising itself on a mammoth launching pad.

The steel sides of the monster glistened out over the cathedral. Mendez began to raise his own arms in genuflection and homage. General Ursus’ face twisted with sheer rage and hate.

“Your God didn’t save you, did he?” he snarled, motioning to the soldiers. Before Mendez could speak again, the guards has brutally knotted the purple robes about his defenseless throat, and with both of them vising from each side, had strangled him where he stood. It took only two minutes. Mendez flopped like a limp doll when they finally released him, falling to the floor of the high altar. Ursus laughed sardonically at the sight.