And Bananas for All A free story from Cheeseburger Brown

CHAPTERS 1|2|3|4|5|6

1/6

The war, in a word, sucked.

Lieutenant Michael Zhang Cuthbertson craned his head to track a flock of Australian ornithopters as they rose in a chattering pack from the camp's crude airstrip and buzzed out over the Indian Ocean, their wings locking in to glide on the highways of wind beneath the cloud deck. The sun winked off their gun turrets. Like vultures, they circled.

Mike sighed. His ears pounded in unwilling sympathy with the wash of hard, thrashing electric music that routinely blanketed the Allied base: Nine Inch Nails, Towers of London, Cherry Nuk-Nuk, The Apocalyptoid Rebellion. Only in the brief dip between songs did the native tapestry of Madagascar's birds, frogs and monkeys shine through the wall of rock. Mike winced, then adjusted his ear-plugs.

He took another bite of something crumbly and sour whose label claimed it was a field ration. Mike had his doubts.

He sat on a milk-crate. The world around him stank of unwashed bodies, gasoline, marijuana and excrement in roughly equal proportions. The aroma was repellent but familiar, somehow less offensive to him than the sour crumbs rattling around the bottom of his ration envelope whose scent was, to his mind, distinctly fungal.

One of the younger recruits grimaced. He was a skinny Australian kid who didn't look old enough to drive. "I think my ration's gone off," he whined.

"Shut up, virgin!" bellowed the nutritions officer.

"But it's all hairy --"

"I will shoot you. Look into my eyes. Am I joking?"

The nutritions officer stomped off. The young recruit tracked his progress with wide eyes. Mike tapped him on the shoulder. "The first rule of field rations: never look. Just reach in, take a hunk, and put it in your mouth."

"But it's disgusting, mate."

Mike nodded philosophically and pressed another wad between his teeth. "It sure is," he agreed, chewing. "Welcome to the Allied Forces."

Most of the diners didn't speak. It was difficult to discern the men from the women. Everyone wore the same shapeless, mud-stained camouflage fatigues, the same worn boots, the same sun-burned, dazed and dour expressions of people who had anticipated the worst, met it, and resigned themselves to more. Some of them were bandaged. Many were scarred. Nobody smiled.

One man keeled over and started vomiting violently into the mud. The nutritions officer spared him a glance. "Medic!" he called mechanically, then strolled on.

"Uh, sir..." ventured Mike.

"What is it, Cuthbertson?" he snapped.

"That is the medic, sir."

The nutritions officer frowned. "Bloody hell."

The only respite Madagascar offered Mike were his forays into dense woodlands infested with armed and desperate enemies. Both the Axis and Allied lines of material communication had been cut, and neither side was comfortable. Mike was a scout. His job was to ply the forest separating the two stranded camps of soldiers to make sure the Axis wasn't about to launch a raid against the Allies. From either side of a narrow ridge of foothills both camps were bent to the purpose of making sure neither side made use of Antsiranana Bay to gain new supplies. At the mouth of the bay the broken remains of Antsiranana City smoldered, ribbons of smoke torn free by the fierce ocean winds to trail dozens of kilometers north-east toward Arabia.

Despite the danger of his missions Mike enjoyed his time away from camp. He nosed his way cautiously through the brush, prodding aside leaves with the barrel of his Mini-Mitrailleuse, pausing to listen to the hidden animals hoot or chirp or squeal.

He knew the trails well. He himself had stomped them flat. He was supposed to be mindful not to leave trails, but after five weeks making the same rounds through the same tangled, leafy gullies he saw no practical way to avoid it. In fact, he frequently crossed the trails of his Axis counterpart. They were scouting the same no man's land, after all.

The trails converged by a massive old baobab tree.

There was a hollow in the tree, and Mike reached unflinchingly inside and removed a carefully wrapped package of soft, brown bananas and one sad-looking apple. He'd have given anything to know where the Axis camp was getting fresh-like fruit from. The accompanying note said:

Dear pal,
Make eat thise in good health. Dou you think rainey season come early? I smell waters on the winds.
Your friend.

Mike grinned. He gingerly peeled one of the bananas and then scooped out the discoloured pulp with his fingers. He licked them clean, then attacked the apple which he enjoyed thoroughly, worms and all. When he was done he removed a cloth-wrapped package from his backpack and added a folded note before shoving it deep inside the baobab's hollow. His note said:

My friend,
I don't know how your guys are doing malaria-wise, but here is some extra permethrin to use against the mosquitos. I hope the rainy season does come soon because our water tastes awful!
Your pal.

Mike straightened. He took a careful look around, cocked his head to listen, and then proceeded along the trail as he peeled his second limp banana. It fell apart in his fingers but he jammed what he could of the brown, seedy paste into his mouth. He wiped his face on a leaf and then wound his way back toward the Allied camp.

He was just close enough to detect the first strains of rock'n'roll when he became aware of another sound: the hum of aircraft. He blinked as a brace of shadows flashed overhead, blocking the shafts of sunshine streaming down through the forest canopy. The tone of the aircraft engines ramped up in pitch as they accelerated.

Where the devil did the Axis camp get planes?

Mike accelerated, too. He barreled through the last fringes of forest and burst out into the clearing around the camp just in time to see a string of bombs drop from the two Axis fighters. The concussions from the first explosions knocked him off his feet, sending him tumbling backward down into the shallow valley through which he'd just trudged.

He was stunned. His ears were ringing. Bits of smoking debris dropped all around him, tearing holes in the leaves with a series of hisses.

Mike clambered to his feet, checked himself for damage, and then struggled to climb out of the valley again. Beyond the clearing the base was burning, great angry clouds of black smoke billowing upward from half a dozen locations. Sirens were wailing, and people were screaming. Anti-aircraft guns stuttered and barked, bursts of flak peppering the sky.

"Medic!"

A flock of ornithopters swooped in from the coast, engines buzzing and guns blazing. Mike ignored them as he sprinted across the clearing. He tossed his gun aside and dropped to the mud beside the first person he saw, ripping off the bottom of his pant-leg and pressing it against a bloody, black-edged wound. "It's gonna be okay," claimed Mike, looking into the soldier's panicked eyes.

A badly burned arm reached out to him from a pile of what Mike had taken to be inanimate debris. Mike took hold of the proffered glove and squeezed it. "Don't worry!" he shouted. "Help is coming!"

The only response was an anguished gurgle.

Mike flinched as a horrendous bang signalled the destruction of one of the Axis planes, its fuselage crumbling as it tumbled out of the sky. It struck the ground to the west of the Allied camp with an earth-shaking thump. A riot of birds burst out of the forest in alarm, and were seconds later cut down into a mist of disconnected feathers and spatters as they crossed a vector of anti-aircraft ordnance.

Ragged strips of sandgrouse, crested ibis and grey-headed lovebird rained down, smacking Mike's helmet. He covered his face with his arms. The lumps of meat smelled like roast chicken and fireworks. A surreal snow of shredded feathers followed.

Covered in blood and feathers, Mike got to his feet and ran deeper into the camp, dodging to avoid other soldiers as they loomed out of the thick, roiling smoke. Their faces were black with soot, their eyes bulging with horror. He skirted the flaming infirmary and then skidded to a halt as the veil parted and afforded him a momentarily unobstructed view out over the water.

The long grey hull of an Axis aircraft carrier was cutting the waves, moving into Antsiranana Bay, another fighter lifting off from its deck with an air-splitting shriek. The massive vessel was flanked by two smaller warships, their turrets swivelling to train on the Allied camp. "Warships!" screamed Mike, his own voice lost in the din.

Infantry was already pounding across the beach to man the big guns. Mike jogged up to the forward bunker on the ridge overlooking the beach to help three other soldiers lift a fallen timber off the satellite communications gear. They tossed it aside with a grunt and then an American with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth grabbed the microphone. "I need a pulse!" he yelled. "I need a pulse now!"

The warship's turrets flashed. Shells struck the beach with geysers of surf and sand, boot and face, metal and flesh. Mike saw a dozen die in a span of seconds. Allied mortars boomed in response.

Beside Mike, the American hooted as the screen on his lap illuminated with a satellite image of the bay, the Axis ships grey smudges in the surf. The American fixed the crosshairs with a practiced twist of the dials. His thumb twitched over the contact. "We're aligned and ready to fire! Major?"

"The major's dead!"

The American nodded to himself curtly, then dragged on his cigarette. He stabbed the trigger and growled through clenched teeth: "Avada kedavra, motherfuckers."

The air over the bay crackled as a hundred kilometers above the Allied Satellite Network found its mark and engaged. A split second later the aircraft carrier and its flanking warships turned bright red and then exploded, throwing up a ten-meter-high shockwave of salt water that surged away from the epicentre. The shattered remains of the ships and a few metric tonnes of ocean were then boiled away into fumes by a second ignition of the orbital laser-pulse weapon.

The noise was horrendous, a quadruple thunderclap of unholy proportions. The blasts of hot air knocked those standing off their feet, the soldiers on the beach tumbling in sequence like dominos. Mike found himself tangled in a litter of tree branches and torn canvas, his body aching, the breath torn from his lungs.

The echoes died away into a silence more profound than it should have been. The crackling fires were mute.

The men on the beach stood up, threw their arms into the air and appeared to cheer. The surf turned dark with the bodies of a thousand flash-fried fish.

Mike crawled out into the clear again, rubbing his head and wondering where his helmet went. He was startled when someone clapped him on the shoulder. He spun around. The American grinned around his blackened and splayed cigarette stub. He said, "America -- fuck yeah!"

"I can't hear anything," said Mike, gesturing to his ears and shrugging.

"What?"

"What are you saying?"

"What?"

The latrine had exploded. There was broiled crap everywhere. A new infirmary was improvised in the officer's mess hall, partly because it was still relatively intact but mostly because it was the tent furthest away from the potentially infectious poo. It still smelled terrible, though. Mike volunteered there until he could no longer stand, and then he slept in an overturned rain-barrel until he was awakened by a sergeant with an eye-patch who tried to drink him.

"Where's the goddamn water?" asked the startled sergeant.

"I don't know," mumbled Mike, blinking against the morning light. He stumbled into the bushes and peed on a fern. He stepped on something that crackled and looked down to discover that it was a human hand. It wasn't connected to anyone, so Mike just left it there in the underbrush.

There was no rock'n'roll that day.

None the less, Mike was grateful to be sent on patrol. Trudging through the forest was considerably less like a living nightmare than the mop-up efforts at the ravaged base. Birds chirped, monkeys howled. Mike could come within spitting distance of forgetting where he was, or what the weapon slung over his shoulder was for. Simply getting away from the smell of burning was invaluable.

He splashed through a brook and then up the embankment toward his baobab tree, his boots crunching on twigs and dried patties of moss. As he approached the tree he started fishing through his pack for the meagre offering of saltines he planned to stash inside the hollow for his friend.

He stopped short. Flies buzzed.

There was a body beside the baobab tree. It was a young Axis soldier with brown skin. The top of his head had been spread into a wide, chunky spray that glistened in the sunlight as it was crisscrossed by streams of ants. "Oh no," whispered Mike.

Mike's friend was dead. And though Mike had seen a lot of death over the weeks, and then quite a bit more over the past day and night, it was this particular loss that caused his knees to turn to jelly. He dropped to his haunches beside the dead soldier and blubbered. He clutched his hair. He struggled to take a breath deep enough to ease his feeling of suffocation.

He wanted to look into his friend's face, to know what he looked like at last, but he couldn't bear to let his sight stray over the grotesque injury. Instead he tugged forlornly on the soldier's pants. "Oh, my friend..." he sighed, his own body feeling monstrous and heavy and dumb.

Something clicked. Mike looked up sharply.

He was surrounded by a platoon of British soldiers, the oil-streaked muzzles of their SA80 assault rifles trained on Mike's head. "Hands up!" they shouted. Mike put his hands up. "Freeze!" they shouted. Mike froze.

"I'm Allied," he offered feebly. "I'm Canadian."

One of the British toggled his radio. "We have him," he said, cold eyes fixed on Mike. "I repeat: we've captured the traitor."

2/6

Mike's sessions of interrogation with the salivating jackals of Allied Intelligence were, in a word, disheartening.

The jackals had been tossed so little for such a long time. They were hungry and restless. Before his capture Mike had noticed them sometimes, keeping to themselves, eating in a private huddle on the furthest edge of the clearing where the troops choked back their emergency rations. They wore no badges for company or platoon, no emblems identifying their branch of service. They were clean-shaven, low-talking, expressionless aliens buzzing sullenly on the periphery of camp life.

The British handed him over to the jackals who housed him in the makeshift plastic prison Mike himself had helped to erect. The cell smelled like poo. The walls were thin, and he could hear his captors brief his keepers. It was otherwise quiet, because Mike was the only person locked up. He heard one of the jackals say, "Rest assured, he'll get our full attention."

Mike steeled himself. He knew his eventual exoneration was inevitable, and he was prepared to undergo some discomfort along the way. He was a team player. He knew the jackals were just doing their jobs. They were guardians of the West, like them all.

"Lieutenant Michael Zhang Cuthbertson?"

"Sir."

"Do they call you Mike?"

"Yessir."

Mike stood at the lip of the little plastic bench he'd been hunkering on. The jackal stood in the doorway, two grim military police flanking his back in the corridor. "My name is John," he said, slipping a polished flask from his breast pocket. "Are you thirsty, Mike?"

Mike drained the flask gratefully. "Thank you."

John tucked it back into his pocket, then buffed his fingernails absently against his lapel. His face was smooth and clean, his blonde hair oiled and neat, his uniformed unrumpled. "You know, son, this is some fairly serious business."

"Yessir," agreed Mike miserably. "What's going to happen now?"

"You're going to have to answer some questions for us."

"I'll do anything I can to cooperate, sir."

John's hard, moss-grey eyes rested on Mike for a long moment. "That's good, Mike. That's very good to hear indeed. It really would be best if we could clear this mess up straight away, without any nonsense."

"Yessir."

"This is what's going to happen, Mike. I'm going to go out there and tell them you're willing to come clean. I'm going to remind them that you're one of our boys. And you, in turn, are going to expend every possible effort to make this as simple as possible for everyone involved. Are we agreed on that, Mike?"

Mike nodded. "Yessir. Absolutely, sir."

John offered him a wan smile that did not crinkle the skin beyond his neat, thin-lipped mouth. "Let me see to those manacles," he said. Mike held out his cuffed hands and John touched a contact on a palm-sized device strapped to his belt. The cuffs clicked twice and then snapped open, dropping to the plywood floor. Mike rubbed the welts on his wrists, wincing.

"I'm afraid that not all of this will be pleasant, Mike. I do feel I need to tell you that. We have to be sure, you must appreciate."

"I know, sir," replied Mike, looking up. He swallowed. "I know you have to do it, sir. I'm sorry, sir."

Again came the wan, isolated smile. John knelt down to collect the discarded cuffs. "Someone will be with you presently," he said, straightened, and left.

Mike felt they were off to a good start.

He was further buoyed when his next visitor turned out to be Nurse Phelps from Philadelphia with whom Mike quite got on. She and Mike liked to kid around when they bumped into each other. She always told Mike what a pity it was that he wore a wedding ring, and though it was only harmless flirting it made Mike feel warm. For his part, Mike had a series of recurring jokes with her asking after the Kwanzaa holidays. "Is it Kwanzaa yet? Are the generals airdropping in wax so we can make some candles? What's the inside word, Nurse Phelps?"

Nurse Phelps would smile: a band of tall white teeth blazing from her dark face. "You're belittling my racial dignity, Cuth. There's a form for that, you know."

But when Nurse Phelps entered his cell in the plastic prison Mike didn't joke and she didn't smile. "Roll up your right sleeve," she said, eyes on her instruments.

"Hi," said Mike.

"Arm," said Nurse Phelps. She took his blood pressure, made a note, then pressed a cold stethoscope into his shirt. "Deep breath in, deep breath out," she commanded.

"Nurse Phelps?"

"I can't talk to you," she whispered harshly, making another note and then shining a light into each of Mike's eyes.

"Okay," conceded Mike, blinking away the afterimages. "Why the check-up?"

Nurse Phelps took her own turn at a deep breath. Her brown eyes flicked up to meet Mike's very briefly, quivering. "They need a baseline," she said crisply, looking away.

"A baseline?"

"So they know how far they can take it."

"Take what?"

Nurse Phelps dropped her instruments back into her bag, then tucked her clipboard under her arm. Mike could see the taut muscles in her neck, working at choking something back as she straightened and briefly faced him again. Her lips twitched. She hissed, "They're going to hurt you, Mike."

"But I don't have anything to hide," he breathed.

She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. "Doesn't matter," she murmured, then slipped out the door.

As the day aged it became very hot inside the cell. Mike took off his shirt, which made his skin stick to the plastic walls when he slumped against them. In the distance he could hear the muffled strains of rock'n'roll mixed with the keening or banging of tools at work toward the ongoing recovery efforts after the Axis attack. He tried to make out which songs were playing, but the mutters that reached him were too mushy. His mind played tricks on him, and so it seemed that when he could identify a brief passage of melody it was unfailingly a song about being trapped.

At twilight an emergency ration envelope was stuffed through a one-way slot in the door, followed by a transparent sac of tawny, speckled water. Shortly thereafter the buzzing fluorescent lamp inside a wire cage on the ceiling blinked out.

Mike ate in the dark, then curled up on the short plastic bench, trying ineffectually to use his elbow as a pillow...

A short but fuzzy time later the light stuttered on again. Mike blinked, furrowing his brow. The door banged open and a tall, stern-faced man stepped into the cell carrying a folding chair. He kicked the door closed behind him, and then unfolded the chair and planted it in the centre of the cell facing Mike. "Get your arse in this chair," barked the man. His accent was Australian.

Mike stumbled off the bench and shuffled over to the chair. He cast an uncertain look up at the grim man and then put his back to him to sit down. He rubbed his eyes, trying to squeeze the sleep away.

He suddenly found himself spilled to the floor, grunting as he jammed his shoulder painfully. He squinted back at the Australian, who appeared to have yanked the chair out from under him. He now righted it gingerly, then stepped back. "Get your arse in the chair," he repeated.

Mike hesitated, then hauled himself up and sat down in the seat once more. The man kicked the chair out from beneath him immediately, sending Mike sprawling toward the bench. He fell rudely, bouncing his forehead against the bench's rounded plastic edge. His nose started to bleed.

"My nose is bleeding," he said.

"Get your arse in that chair," said the Australian.

"Why?" growled Mike. "What's the point if you keep knocking me off?" he challenged, the sight of his own blood on his fingers causing a spurt of adrenalin to waft through him. He didn't wait to cringe, and this was appropriate because the Australian's response was to gallop forward with a terrifyingly decisive vigour and club Mike repeatedly about the ears with his balled fists.

When Mike fell to his knees the Australian stepped back again. He took a moment to dust off his polished boots, then straightened and flexed his hands methodically. He looked at Mike. "Get your arse in this chair, soldier."

It was a game. It was a dark game, because there was no way to win. The game was a matter of processing, of preparation, of framing the situation just so. It was a trial to be endured and Mike endured it. He closed his eyes and thought of Christmas. This jackal could hit him, but he couldn't touch Mike's mind.

Or so Mike thought. In thinking this he had perhaps underestimated the wear and tear of the ongoing trial, the unbroken cycles of obedience and abuse, obedience and abuse. Time unspun, and the night became endless. Something inside of Mike became desperate and craven, and his heart was squeezed by storms of emotion that moved inexorably further away from anything tied to dignity.

Mike dragged himself up on the chair again, a dime-sized drop of blood landing between his shaking hands. "Please don't kick me over," he whispered hoarsely. "Please don't do it again."

The Australian hooked his thumbs into his belt. "You like that chair, huh?"

"Yessir."

"You want to keep sitting in it, is that right?"

"Yessir. I'll answer anything. I'm not trying to make this hard."

"It is a pretty good chair," said the Australian with a philosophical air, examining the wall idly. He turned back to Mike, his eyes dark and inhuman. "But I don't think you love that chair enough yet. No, not quite enough."

"I love this chair," claimed Mike. He really, really did.

"Not yet you don't."

Mike was sent careening into the wall. The chair was righted. He crawled back aboard, then was spilled roughly to the floor. He crawled back in position to sit again even before the Australian had righted it this time. He waited until the Australian had stepped back, then climbed on.

After a moment he looked up again. The Australian crossed his arms. "Okay, here's the deal, pally: if you want to sit in this chair, you have to keep sitting. I'm going to go have a little something for breaky. When I come back, I'd better find your arse nailed to that chair or there'll be some hell to pay. You got that?"

Mike did. A thousand horses couldn't drag him from his beloved seat.

The Australian left. Mike cried.

He was left alone for a long time. He had not previously appreciated how painful something like sitting on a hard chair could become until the fourth or fifth hour when his thighs, buttocks and lower-back burned with constant embers of hurt. A ration envelope was slipped through the slot, but Mike didn't dare move to touch it. His throat became dry and cottony, and then it became hard to swallow. Still, Mike would not give up his perch to retrieve the drink sac. He was determined to prove to the jackals whose side he was on.

Come noon perspiration was running off Mike's body like rain. His head sagged. He was desperate to slip off the chair and snatch up the dirty water. His dry tongue rasped as it passed ineffectually over his cracking lips.

John entered the cell. He tugged on the pleats of his trousers and squatted down beside Mike's chair. "Here now, son," he said, nudging Mike with the polished flask.

"John," gasped Mike after he'd drained the flask again. "John, he hasn't even asked me anything."

"I know, Mike," said John, straightening. "He says you're fighting him."

"I'm not, I swear. I just want to get this over with. I just want to help."

John nodded slowly. "I think you're telling the truth, Mike, I do. And, candidly, I think my colleague is off the mark with you. I think this all boils down to a stupid mistake compounded by a big misunderstanding. Is that right, Mike?"

Mike nodded, his eyes locked on John's. He felt as if John were the last sane man left on Earth.

John offered him his curious smile, then stood up straight and sighed. "How long have you been in that chair?"

"I don't know. A long time."

"You must be starting to feel the pinch by now."

Mike nodded.

John appeared to hesitate, then cleared his throat and said, "Well, I think whatever point my colleague was illustrating here has already been amply made. You're released from the chair, Mike. Go lie down on the bench. I'll go have a word with him and see if we can't expedite things a bit. How does that sound?"

Mike gratefully collapsed on the plastic bench, his muscles twitching and his pelvis numb. He looked over when he heard the cell door open and close, his heart skipping a beat when he saw that his latest visitor was the Australian. His face was pulled into a tight, sour expression.

"I gave you one simple thing to do, soldier," he said slowly. "And this is how you handle it? By giving it up as soon as my back is turned?"

"I'm sorry," stammered Mike. "John said --"

The Australian snapped, "Who the devil is John?"

Mike stared back blankly. "Your colleague, John, said he would talk to you..."

"There's no John here. You're playing games with me, pally."

"I'm not, I'm not -- I'm really not. I'm sorry."

The Australian sniffed, then took a quiet step backward around to the far side of the folding chair. He put his hands behind his back and looked up. "Get your arse in this chair," he said.

And so it begun again.

When it was all over, and Mike had proven beyond any doubt his dedication to keeping his seat, the Australian brought a second folding chair and set it up directly opposite Mike. He sat down, then straightened his shirt and brushed dust from his thighs. "Name?" he asked flatly, not looking up.

"Michael Zhang Cuthbertson."

"Serial number?" Mike recited it. "Date of birth?" Mike recited it. "Date of enlistment?" Mike supplied it. "Rank and function?" Mike answered quickly, a strange, giddy feeling of relief washing over him as they proceeded through each question and answer set without Mike ending up punched or tossed to the ground. He felt buoyant and he fought not to smile. A warm ripple of delight rose up his spine and tingled out through every hair on his head. "Where were you trained?"

"CFB Petawawa."

"When did you first make contact with the enemy scout?"

"Three weeks ago."

"What were the circumstances?"

"I found a sentence carved into a baobab tree. It said, Is the whole world crazy? So I carved in an answer underneath. I'm not sure what made me do it."

"What was your answer?"

"I said, Yes, it is."

"Then what happened?"

"We started exchanging notes."

"What did the notes say?"

"Nothing, really. He complained about their beds, I complained about our food. Neither one of us wanted to get in trouble. But we just sort of became friends, I guess."

"So you admit you formed a relationship with an enemy soldier?"

"I felt bad for him. One time he said his gums hurt and he thought he was malnourished, so I left a package of vitamins inside the tree for him to find."

"Where did you get the vitamins?"

"They were mine. From breakfast. I just felt sorry for him. It's so shitty out here for all of us."

"You pitied the enemy?"

"I guess I was relieved not to have to treat him as an enemy. I guess I was relieved that I didn't feel like I had to kill him. We'll all stranded out here together, kind of in the same boat, in a way. I was...I was just being nice because it felt so good when he was nice to me."

"Are you homosexual?"

"No. I'm married. Um, to a woman."

Mike's euphoria waned as the hours passed and the questions merely changed order, never discovering an answer that would put any of them to rest. The Australian pestered Mike over the same topics over and over in an uninflected monotone. There were clots of micro-questions probing to the depths of the most irrelevant detail, but only vague, brief queries about things Mike could securely disavow knowledge of, like Axis secrets and the conspiracy to distract, disarm and destroy the Allied camp while the Axis boats made a run for the harbour.

Any time Mike said, "I don't know," the Australian changed tack and directed his questions back at something they could agree upon, like the GPS coordinates of the baobab tree or from which direction Mike saw the first Axis fighter crash. "I don't know," was a poison phrase that drew Mike further from his goal of advancing the investigation.

"How many non-rigid structures are there in the Allied camp?"

"I've never counted. I'm not sure. Eight?"

"What access to potable water does the Axis camp have?"

"I don't know."

"Describe your footwear at the time of your arrest: size, style, condition."

When the Australian left John came to visit. He offered his flask as usual and opened the ration envelopes because Mike's hands were shaking too badly, then helped Mike hobble over to the plastic bench. "How are you holding up, son?" he asked.

"How long have I been here?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Are you giving me drugs that screw with my sense of time?"

"You know I can't discuss it, Mike. There's a war on. Our very way of life is at stake. Our methods must remain secret."

"I feel really weird."

"You're a good lad, Mike. You're going to get through this. Tell them everything. Don't leave anything out. Don't try to decide for them -- they know what's important. Give yourself up to that, Mike."

"I'm trying to, John. I really, really am."

Mike awoke when the Australian returned. The Australian was outraged to discover Mike off his chair, so he beat the crap out of him. Mike lay on the plywood floor and drooled. After he heard the door close he crawled over to the chair and pulled himself up onto it. He lay his cheek upon the seat, which was the best he could do.

The next series of interviews with the Australian were wearying, maddening, unrelenting. There were traps in the questions but Mike was determined to be consistent, to be truthful, to represent his innocence as completely as he was able. The nerves in his brain burned with the effort. He felt like a living bruise.

When he became too good at it the Australian changed the rules: now Mike had to supply a satisfying answer within a count of five or he'd be doused in a splash of ice-water from a series of pails the Australian wheeled in on a steel cart. Incorrect answers included, "I don't know," and "I'm not sure," and "How could I know that?"

Soon Mike was shivering, his lips blue, his teeth clanking together. His legs became numb, and he slipped off the chair and crumpled at the Australian's feet. The Australian turned away in disgust, slamming the cell door behind him. A few minutes or hours or days later John returned.

Mike looked up at him from the floor. "John," he wheezed. "Oh God, John. I'm so glad you came back. Please, John, please help me. Please make it stop. I can't...I just can't..."

"Come come," said John soothingly. "There there now, Mike. Here, have some warm tea." Mike drank. "You trust me, don't you, Mike?"

"The Australian says you're not real. But I think you're real. I think he's just trying to make me crazy."

John nodded. He knelt down on the floor next to Mike. "Mike, give me your hand."

Mike put his right hand in John's left without hesitation. John turned it over slowly, as if evaluating the need for a manicure. "I want to be able to help you here, Mike. But my colleague says we're not making the progress we should be."

"What can I do? Just tell me and I'll do it. I'll do it for you, John."

John nodded again. "I know, Mike. But, to be candid, all of these delays are making things difficult for me. I want to be able to go out there and tell them we've gotten somewhere substantial, you understand? I want to be able to go out there and give them some good news."

"How can we do that? What should I say?"

"I need your assurance that you're being entirely forthcoming."

"I am, John, I really, really am."

"Yes," he agreed quietly. "I believe you. But I'm not sure the others do." He held Mike's hand gently, his own skin warm and soft against Mike's. "We have to be sure. You can appreciate that, can't you? These are life and death times we're living in. The West could be destroyed, and then we'd certainly regret having given an inch, wouldn't we?"

"I know."

"So, this time, you're going to answer a few questions for me rather than for my colleague. How would that strike you, Mike?"

"It sounds really good, John. Ask me anything."

John drew a slow breath, looked Mike in the eye, and then took a hold of his pinky and snapped the bone with a decisive twist. Mike screamed. "Look at me, Mike," commanded John. Mike's eyes moved down to his hand. John barked his command a second time, and Mike's gaze rose to him like a magnet, his lips quivering.

"Why..."

John snapped his ring finger. "Look at me, Mike," he repeated. "Just keep looking at me. And then when we get to the last finger, you can start telling me things."

"No," begged Mike. "No, John, don't."

"I have to, Mike. I'm sorry." He broke Mike's middle finger.

"John, I love you John!" Mike heard himself screech, immediately ashamed of his inexplicable confession, lost in a wash of self-loathing.

John didn't laugh or shout. "I know," he said quietly. "I know. Just two more to go, Mike. Stay steady." Mike's index finger crunched loudly as it fractured.

Mike was blubbering. Tears ran down his cheeks. He felt as if his heart were being torn from his chest. He wanted to hug John, to tell he was sorry, to make everything somehow alright again. He hungered in a bottomless, desperate way for the final digit to be snapped, so he could start talking again.

His thumb was bent over backward, strained until the skin turned white, and then at last released with a satisfying gush of red hot pain. Mike didn't even hear the crack. His hand felt giant-sized and distant, a part of someone else.

"There," smiled John. "You passed, Mike."

Mike couldn't speak.

"I never even had to restrain you. You didn't once try to pull your hand away. Now I know you really do trust me."

Mike nodded dumbly.

"Alright then," pronounced John, gently releasing Mike's mangled limb. He cleared his throat. "Now -- let's talk."

Mike talked. When he ran out of things to say he made new ones up. When these didn't earn him any progress he embellished his inventions, his words falling out on top of one another in an eager stream, the lies becoming increasingly broad until he heard himself confessing to a secret double life as an Axis spy, recruited before the war, brainwashed by undetectable harmonics in pop music. He repented aloud his every sin, from the time he stole five dollars from his mother's purse to his dedication to overthrowing the West from the inside out. He wept openly when he told John about hitting a dog with his car, and he tried to apply the same convincing drama when he lamented his role as an Allied Judas.

He began to wonder if it were true. He began to wonder if he had been brainwashed and that perhaps John and the Australian's cruelties were in fact designing to help him snap out of it. He began to think of his confessions as cathartic acts of deprogramming. "I stole the Prime Minister!" he wailed. "I poisoned all the babies at the nursery! I helped Santa Claus attack Baron Toys!"

"What else?" asked John, his voice hypnotic and syrupy.

In the morning Mike was seen by Nurse Phelps again. She avoided his eyes. "Is it Kwanzaa yet?" asked Mike blearily, then cackled. "It's going to be Kwanzaa soon and then they'll let me go home."

But it wasn't Kwanzaa. When the Australian came again he kicked the chair out from under Mike, who yelped miserably as his splint-fingered right hand glanced off the floor. "Get your arse on that chair," pronounced the Australian with apparent relish.

"Not this again," begged Mike. "Can't we move on? I've told you so much."

The Australian shook his head. "Not enough, pally. Not nearly enough."

Something inside of Mike failed. It was clear to him that there was nothing he could do to advance his cause, no words he could say that would bring him freedom. The jackals, left so long with no plaything, might have no objectives for him to reach rather than helping them pass the time until the next supply plane made it through. They were sick, all of them: John, the Australian, even Nurse Phelps whose fickle mercy didn't extend to him any longer.

All will to cooperate evaporated. Mike became limp. He was determined never speak to another human being so long as he lived.

His eyes became windows through which he looked out indifferently, a passenger observing the world's scenery. He saw the Australian beat him, and watched with detachment as John's lips moved saying some twisted or teasing something. Periods of heat and cold alternated. Someone tried to heave him into the chair again, but Mike slid off liquidly. The Australian and John argued over him, in the same room together at last.

"You gave him too much. He's bloody catatonic, James! Where else do you expect to go?"

"The plane's not coming until the sixth, John. Let's see if we can't shock a reaction out of him. Get Phelps to set up some electrodes."

"She won't do it. She was friendly with him outside."

"Good. Let her refuse, and then we'll get her in a cell as well. It's been a long time since I worked on a female."

The worst part was that Mike knew he didn't remember the worst parts. He had scars and tenderness he could not explain, and cringe-inducing quasi-recalled flashes that filled him with fear. Nightmare and experience had become mutually indistinguishable. The only thing to do was to stop thinking at all, to drift along with the current like a loose pebble or a piece of trash.

One day he was wordlessly fitted with a black hood. He was manacled at the wrists and then dragged outside, shoved up the cargo gangway of a thrumming aircraft. He was pushed into a metal stall whose floor rang hollowly under his stumbling feet, then he was strapped much too tightly to a thin-cushioned seat. Doors were slammed and metal latches clanged as they were dogged fast for the trip. The engines revved louder, exhausts screeching.

Mike's stomach lurched as the airplane began to move. He was on his way somewhere, but he didn't care.

It was cold in the air. He wondered if he were expected to freeze to death. Perhaps he wasn't being transported but merely discarded. Who could know the minds of monsters? Mike slipped deeper into himself, living in a veil of scintillating darkness and thoughtless oblivion...

He was roused when the plane banked sharply. The engines rose in pitch, then the plane banked the other way, tossing Mike against the sides of his hold, the straps biting into him. A distant thumping resolved into the crisp stutter of machine gun fire. The plane bucked -- evasive manoeuvres.

The next volley of fire shook the craft, punctuated by a series of loud bangs followed by the scream of new winds. The cabin was depressurizing. Mike heard the pilots yell. Seconds later the plane dipped into a steep dive.

Mike recognized that they had been shot down, and that he was experiencing his last few moments of life, shaken like a ragdoll strapped to a seat in a rolling and pitching metal box falling out of the sky.

Mike felt a certain freedom knowing he wouldn't have to answer any more questions.

Metal shrieked as it tore, and then Mike began spinning more rapidly. The plane was coming apart. Fields of hallucinatory colour washed over the darkness inside his hood. He saw stars, and he dreamed he was plummeting through outer space.

He admired the nebulae.

3/6

The afterlife was, in a word, bewildering.

Mike believed his life was passing before his eyes, because he dreamed he was latched at the teat of a mother he had never remembered. The presentation did not progress, however, nor dwindle into a tunnel. There was neither a great light nor a chorus of angels, but there was something tickling his nose.

Mike sneezed.

As if this were not a sufficient clue, he next became aware that he ached. A resolute corner of his foggy mind decided that sneezing and aching were not consistent with death. If he suffered, he lived.

It was easy to be lulled away from such irksome thoughts: he was warm, he was reclined -- the world was dark and delicious, if slightly musky. He passed on into another valley of senselessness, a grey and timeless place where there were no realities to contend with beyond the rhythmic gulp of ambrosia...

Someone grunted. A body shifted against Mike, then farted.

Mike opened his eyes.

It was the still, quiet hour before dawn: half the sky was spangled by stars that looked close enough to touch while the other half glowed indigo with the threat of day. Between the stars a flurry of orbital machines coasted, gleaming faintly orange with tomorrow's morning reflecting on their armoured hides. The view was both girdled and sliced by the black webbing of foliage in silhouette, a faintly whispering foreground moving in the breeze.

It was the still, quiet hour before dawn, and Mike was being breast-fed by an ape.

He reeled backward and rocked on his haunches, spitting greasy hairs from his mouth. Then, overwhelmed by a wave of dizziness, he dropped to his hands and knees -- recalling viscerally his damaged right hand, he gasped and reflexively pulled the limb in close to his chest. This sudden motion caused a ripple of response in the shadows around him, a change in the collective draw of breath.

Mike froze. His eyes were wide, his skin prickling.

He was surrounded. A wall of gorilla-like figures formed a tight ring all around him. Mike could smell them. He could see their hair matted against the stars. He could hear them snort and sniff as they shifted, prodding one another and nodding.

They jingled as they moved.

The sky through the trees was slowly becoming rosier, its diffuse light reflecting as amber sparkles in dozens of sets of eyes. Mike looked back at them, fighting to slow his rapid, panicked breathing.

The sun was rising, mutually introducing the apes and Mike to one another's vision. To Mike they seemed huge, their cluster tight and ominous, their demeanor one of careful evaluation. He was worried about upsetting them, but at the same time he recognized that it was easy to be deferential when you're terrified. Among mammals emotions are broadcast in the clear.

Mike sat up slowly, aware of his every motion being tracked. He turned to the face of the ape whom had offered him her breast, and two brown eyes regarded him calmly from atop a wrinkled, hazel snout. A pink-faced infant sat on her shoulder, cocking its head at Mike.

Her eyes could have been human. For a moment Mike could almost believe it was an actor in costume. She held his eyes as people do.

Mike decided they were probably not gorillas. They looked more like bonobos, or chimpanzees. If he remembered correctly, a healthy young chimpanzee could easily overpower an adult human being. Any fight would be a quick contest. He gulped.

The chimp blinked at him, then jutted out her chin. Mike stared back. She sniffed, then raised her hand to her mouth in a vaguely claw-like shape and tilted it back against her lips as she raised her brow. When Mike didn't react, she did it again.

He looked around. Another chimp made the same gesture. Mike furrowed his brow, his thoughts coming together mushily. As the apes gestured again he dared to wonder whether it were pure coincidence or his subconscious colouring the interpretation that made the movement seem like the American Sign Language gesture-phrase for "drink?"

Mike blinked. He let out a little gasp as one of the apes shuffled forward proffering something in her long arms. Mike looked down at it, squinting in the feeble morning light. It was a gourd with a hole in it.

The ape signed: "Drink?"

Mike accepted the gourd with shaking fingers, his hand-cuffs clicking against each other. He watched the apes watching him as he lifted it to his lips and tilted it back. Cool, slightly tangy water dribbled out and into his mouth. Rationality was briefly put aside as his body made its demands paramount, forcing him to chug greedily until he'd sucked the last drops from the gourd. Involuntarily, he dropped it.

"Cup drop cup," observed one of the apes, leathery fingers whispering against each other as they formed crude, careless versions of the signs Mike had studied in high school.

Without thinking, Mike circled his hand on his chest: "Sorry."

Shafts of bright sunshine began to angle through the forest canopy. Cool moisture from the mulch floor rose in a mist. The birds had roused themselves to their full polyphonic effort to greet the day. Mike's head became clearer, forcing him to reassess his situation over and over until he became convinced these long, weird moments were real. He was, in fact, crouching on a hilltop surrounded by what looked to him to be chimpanzees who jingled when they moved, and they had brought him here and...nursed him back to health.

Each of them wore a collar, and from each collar dangled a metal tag. The tags were engraved with what looked to Mike to be letters or numbers or both, the shallow edges of the figures winking in the light.

Mike found himself lying down again, slightly dazed. His left leg was not in altogether good shape, and the wound still seemed to be oozing blood. He probed the area with his fingers, wincing. He pressed too close, and hissed.

"Hurts," signed the chimps in sympathetic concert.

Mike almost laughed. Instead, he coughed. It hurt to cough, and he guessed he might have a broken rib or two. Taking a deep breath was okay, so he figured he hadn't punctured a lung.

He took a more sober look around.

The chimps owned this clearing on top of the hill -- the plants had been beaten down flat by repeated traffic. They nested on the ground, gorilla-style, and a few of the nests had small tokens in them: a rotten teddy bear, a plastic doll head, a shredded piece of blanket, a cracked mug with faded hearts on it.

"Where are you guys from?" asked Mike hoarsely, surprised by the sound of his own voice. He followed this with an awkward attempt to sign his words. "Where before?"

"Home," signed several of the chimps simultaneously.

"That makes sense," admitted Mike. "I'm from home, too."

The chimps didn't understand that.

He became aware of a smell, a familiar but unpleasant sting that hung in the air. When he recognized it as burning kerosene he found himself flooded with memories from the previous days, including his arrest and incarceration, his ordeal at the hands of the jackals, and concluding with the recollection that the airplane he was being transported in had been hit by enemy fire.

Evidently, it had gone down. Evidently, Mike had survived. And, somehow, he had been rescued and adopted by a gang of chimps who knew ASL and at least one of whom was lactating and generous with her milk. They were tagged. They knew men, and did not fear them.

On the contrary, they seemed very pleased to have Mike among them. As the atmosphere of worry diffused they began to offer him food: handfuls of berries he couldn't identify, and stalks of chewy grass. They offered him sticks coated in sap holding together a congealed layer of dead termites, and when he hesitated they demonstrated how to saw the sticks across the molars to peel away the snack. Driven by a biological compulsion to feed, Mike emulated them and swallowed three sticks worth of sticky insect crust without retching. As they pressed around him with their offerings they made rapid, clumsy slurries of gestures that Mike was too slow to interpret. He wracked his brains to remember what he'd learned in school.

He carefully repeated his graceless signing over and over until the apes understood: "My name M-I-K-E."

"M-I-K talk!" they echoed back to him amid triumphant pant-hoots. They then proceeded to identify themselves with a series of abstracted gestures Mike strained to assign any meaning to. He caught that one of the younger males had a name based on the sign for run and that the lactating female had a name related to salute.

"You must have escaped from a lab or something..." said Mike thoughtfully. "Or did somebody dump you guys out here? Was it some kind of animal rescue gone wrong?"

The chimps had no coherent answer to that question either. It wasn't really clear how much they understood him. To feel each other out, to exchange words -- there certainly seemed to be somebody home when he looked in those eyes, but on the other hand he had to admit that sometimes it seemed like his dog back at home was following along, too. Mike's signing trailed off. One of the larger males appeared to be industriously picking his nose and then wiping the debris on the hair behind his left ear. The chimps blinked.

Mike sighed. They didn't know any better than Mike did what country they were in, or in which direction he should set off for help. These chimpanzees had somehow saved his life and sat vigil over him while he slept, but they couldn't rescue him.

Mike tried to stand again, but failed. He was sweating. It took him a moment to recover his breath.

"Where did I come from?" he asked. "Can you take me there?"

"Mess," signed the chimps. Some of them pointed.

"I need a crutch. I need a big stick or something. Big stick?"

They brought him one. Grimacing as he fought to favour his wounded leg, Mike hauled himself up to a standing position. The apes looked up at his new posture with a kind of awe. Mike grunted. He felt a trickle of fresh blood paint warm lines down his shin.

The crash site was not far away, but it took Mike a long time to reach it. The chimps were patient. A couple of adults hovered in his vicinity, pacing around him. Another trio roved further into the surrounding jungle, scanning the brush and hooting quietly to one another. They came to an artificial clearing where the trees were burned out husks and the forest floor a carpet of ash. These strips of still smoking desert were concentrated around the many piles of twisted debris in three widely spaced islands -- the nose, the tail, and the mid-section of the plane. The wings appeared to have been shredded into confetti.

One of the chimps tugged on Mike's elbow. "Hot," she warned.

"Stinks," signed another.

"Mess big mess," they all agreed.

"I'll say," said Mike. He hauled himself forward on his tree-branch crutch, headed for the remains of the nose cone and cockpit. He heard the chimps shuffle behind him. He turned, "You guys stay here, okay? It could be dangerous. Hot, right? It stinks."

"Stinks hot."

"Yeah. So just stay right here. I'll be back in a minute."

Gaping holes had been punched in the canopy when the plane went down. Mike passed through pools of bright sunshine as he limped and crunched his way across the black field. He slowed from his already slow pace as the cockpit drew near. A cloud of flies were buzzing around it.

Mike sniffed the air anxiously, which made him feel a lot like an ape.

The cockpit was a mess. Any hopes of getting the radio working were immediately dashed, as it appeared to have melted. There was only one body. The co-pilot must have ejected. The pilot, meanwhile, appeared to have been ventilated by a spray of machine gun fire that had punctured the fuselage in a dozen places. The body also appeared to have suffered some additional trauma in the crash itself, and Mike had a hard time looking at it. Never the less, there was something critical he sought...

Pawing through the largely pulped remains was one of the least palatable things Mike had ever done, but it was all worth it when he found the only slightly scorched manacle control fastened to a singed length of belt. Mike closed his eyes in silent prayer and held the test circuit.

The light winked on feebly.

Mike touched the actuator. His hand-cuffs buzzed, then clicked twice and dropped away from his sore wrists. They landed in the ashes between his feet with a soft thump, raising a small cloud. And then Mike, staring down at them, experienced a special moment.

He was free.

He took a deep breath, watching motes of ash drift through the bars of twinkling sunshine that slanted through the punctured jungle canopy. A million kinds of animal chirped and buzzed. Whether civilization was over the next hill or a hundred miles away Mike could not reckon, but he realized that, for the time being, it didn't matter: his leg wouldn't let him get far in any event.

He looked back at the chimpanzees. They had discovered a curve of fuselage with an oval window in it, and were taking turns peeking at each other through the frame and cavorting. Those on the other side hooted and clapped. After a moment it dawned on Mike what they were doing: the chimps were pretending they were on TV.

Someone, somewhere, had been very kind to these animals. That in itself made Mike feel more whole, a small reminder that not everyone in the world was hellbent on war, on hate, on control and on fear. Someone, somewhere had made a life for these funny little hairy men. Briefly, he wondered what tragedy had whisked the chimps from that care.

These weren't wild animals. Like Mike, they had been tossed.

And if they could manage to survive out here, so could Mike -- at least with their help, he reckoned; and at least until he healed.

After a last sweep through the mangled cockpit Mike was able to retrieve a slightly burnt blanket, a pocket-knife and a wholly intact first aid kit from the emergency compartment. Thus equipped he loped back toward the verdant bushes where the chimpanzees had collected, a cautious duo on their outskirts still scanning the woods for trouble, reminding Mike that he was in no toothless paradise -- like the chimps, he had best stay on his toes.

"Okay," he said. "Let's go."

Slowly the party wound back to the hilltop.

4/6

The slow life was, in a word, refreshing.

That is not to say it was always easy: Mike and his troglodyte brethren lived balanced on a knife's edge of survival, allowing them to forget for only the shortest, sweetest moments that almost every element of their surroundings would prefer them dead, and would conspire to arrange for it given the most humble opportunity. The plants, the bugs, the beasts, the spores: all of them were hungry, relentless, and untroubled by conscience.

In the wet season it rained, and then even the water itself seemed determined to wipe out the little troop -- floods, monsoons, quicksand, the bacteria of something rotten spreading down the stream to poison whosoever should want a drink. The wind was wicked; the sun cruel; the air a cloud of disease-laden mosquitos.

But, in time, the wet season passed. Only one chimp was lost.

The hilltop had changed considerably in the wake of Mike. Now, instead of nests on the ground, they slept in hammocks slung between the trees with tough, twisted-fibre ropes Mike manufactured from dried vines sealed with oil boiled from the fat of bushbabies, vervets and blue monkeys. Some of the chimps had become quite adept at the rope-making process, and had even introduced innovations to Mike's clumsy weave. Two of the taller, straighter trees had been stripped of most of their branches in order to serve as crow's nests for sighting predators before they approached too close. Raised between them was a bundle of food stores, their supports coated with sap to dissuade insect thieves; it was a constant arms race against the ants.

At the heart of this simple village was a fire-pit ringed with stones, in and of itself Mike's single greatest contribution to improving daily life for himself and his friends. Over it they cooked their meat and softened edible roots, boiled their drinking water, cured hides, disinfected wounds, and huddled around against the weather's most unsympathetic fits.

"You've got to love fire," Mike would opine.

"Fire hot good," agreed the chimps. "Dance fire, nice fire."

Though Mike had many times attempted to explain the purely mechanical nature of flame, the chimpanzees could not or would not resist the urge to personify it. While Mike patiently demonstrated the methods of firecraft, the chimps insisted on appealing to and deconstructing apparent instances of fire's emotional life, its preferences and grudges, its desires and appetites, its sometimes curiously disconnected way of meting out justice...

"Fire burn! Fire angry!"

"The fire isn't angry -- you just shouldn't muck with it when you've got grease on your hands. Grease is flammable."

"Fire bite punish fire."

"No, the fire is not punishing you. You've just got to wash your hands."

Mike would then shake his head as the chastized chimp would skip washing and instead proceed to feed the fire something they believed it found delicious, like strips of fast-burning bark or dried-out bricks of mulch. Appeasing the fire's feelings of retribution was, to the chimp mind, vastly more important than following Mike's instructions.

"Good nice," the chimp would coo soothingly. "Nice fire good."

Mike had named the chimps, either arbitrarily or in connection to some physical or behavioural characteristic. For their part, the chimps quickly developed gestural short-hand for each name -- a sort of abstracted flick loosely connected to the sound or the action representing the individual. Mike's name, for instance, was simply the sign for the letter M. The young male Mike had designated as Climber identified himself with the sign for "pull."

It was Climber now who hooted from his perch in one of the watch trees. Mike looked up. Climber signed broadly due to the distance between them: "Bad coming."

Mike whistled. The chimps around him stopped whatever they were doing and looked to him. "The baddies are coming," he said in a carrying voice, his hands jogging to echo the words. "I want a bragging party out front, and pincer platoons to the flanks. Slingers to your stations. Go, go, go!"

The apes hurried into position. Mike strolled around the fire-pit, keeping an eye on their well-rehearsed preparations. His clothes were a mash-up of shreds of uniform bound with hides and furs, his lengthening hair kept out of his eyes with a bandana of tough leather. His boots were Canadian Forces standard issue, black as pitch and tough as kevlar. He glanced back up the watch tree to Climber, his brow raised in inquiry.

Climber pointed to his own eyes, then indicated a direction. He squinted at his fingers for a long moment and then carefully raised six. He pointed finally to his genitals.

Mike understood: a war party of six males approaching from the south. Rival chimpanzees, piercing their territory.

"They must be new to the neighbourhood," chuckled Mike. "Slingers: look south! Beaters: to your marks!"

The hilltop fell silent. Mike squatted low by the pit. At the edge of audibility he detected the twig-snap, mulch-crunching approach of the six alien chimpanzees up the south face of the hill. When the footfalls and quiet grunts came close enough Mike nodded to the beaters. The beaters, in turn, yanked and sawed on long ropes attached to a series of young, flexible treetops extending around the hill: the net effect was that the brush all around the invaders began to shimmy and shake, surrounding them in a wash of white noise and petty distractions.

He heard the invaders holler in confusion. From experience Mike knew this would be enough to send most of them fleeing back the way they had come, but there was always a couple stalwart or foolish enough to make a charge uphill. Indeed, seconds later a large, black-faced male burst out of the bush on the periphery of the village, his arms waving in rage and panic.

He came face to face with the bragging party, a line of three females who launched into a furious campaign to intimidate him with flailing arms and shouts. The invader was not impressed; he made little rushes at them, smacking the dirt. The bragging party retreated a few steps at a time, drawing him into the clear. Then the invader caught sight of Mike behind the bragging party and froze, eyes wide. He reared up on its hind legs and roared, sharp yellow teeth casting off strings of saliva.

Mike made a quick gesture. "Fire!" he called.

The bragging party fell back, dropped to the ground, and pulled squares of hard bark over their heads. The invader was pelted by stones launched from leather slings swung by invisible attackers hidden behind leaf-stuffed screens in the foliage surrounding the village. The ordnance came from several directions at once and, while most of the stones missed their mark (the chimps had really terrible aim), the bewildering volley was sufficient to convince the foreign ape to beat a hasty retreat.

"Beaters stop!" yelled Mike. The bushes stopped shaking, providing the fleeing invader with a clear course to safety away from the hill, the sides of his escape route reinforced with two pincer platoons of hollering chimps. As he passed them they gave chase, screaming at the top of their lungs.

A few moments later all parties returned to the hilltop. Mike did a quick head count, then nodded to himself with satisfaction. "Stand down," he said. "We're all clear, guys. Good work!"

The chimps pant-hooted happily and congratulated each other. The babies were pulled out of hiding and Gourmand resumed tearing the carcasses of the morning's prey into strips suitable for easy cooking. Young Edgar and Bella watched intently, fascinated by the work of Gourmand's chipped-stone blade.

After supper everyone gathered for their favourite pastime: taking turns posing inside the window-frame of the piece of charred aircraft fuselage they'd retrieved from the crash site. Mike sat on the ground and laughed along with the gang as Flirt and Glutton did a well-loved slapstick routine in which they kept smacking into one another. The chimps howled, making the distinctive staccato grunts Mike had come to know as the voice of their comedic appreciation.

He did a routine, too, re-enacting moments of physical hilarity from The Simpsons television show -- a show to which the chimps had obviously had much exposure in their prior life. "D'oh!" cried Mike. The chimps fell on their sides, gasping for air.

Later, Mike swung lazily in his hammock as the chimps pursued one another in a fresh battery of mating games. When the courtships started Mike knew it was best to keep clear, as strong emotions were sometimes roused and jealous chimps had a fierce and sometimes blind temper. Any of these gentle creatures could snap Mike's bones without significant effort, given the wrong combination of circumstances.

Mike's throat felt raw on account of using it to say eight or nine things in a single day. When they weren't concerned about rival gangs encroaching on their territory the times when speaking was called for were few and far between; among close friends, the most meaningful kinds of communication were accomplished by eye, body and smell. So rarified were the situations that actually necessitated speech that Mike began to wonder whether warfare -- whether the need to have precise orders understood by groups -- was the impetus that propelled speech into man's daily habit. Almost no other part of life required it, when one stripped away the extraneum.

Twilight came and the moon rose, a crisp crescent of silver between bands of scalloped cloud. The chimps left off from their pursuits to look up at it in wonder. "Sky banana," they signed reverently. "Banana sky."

Bananas were a sore spot for the chimps. They missed them terribly. Any analogue of a banana's shape, like the crescent moon, and any analogue of its colour, including dozens of varities of flower, earned their instant and deepest regard. In the resemblance to their cherished fruit they saw a connection to the original prototype, a byway for worship and a way to touch what wasn't there.

Solemnly they mimed the peeling their index fingers, eyes locked on the above.

Mike sighed. He, too, would like a nice banana.

The next morning was quiet, dry and warm. The sky banana had long since set. There was, however, an uneasy feeling in the air and the chimps eyed the forest around their hill nervously. Mike knuckled his eyes and slipped out of his hammock, raising an inquiring brow at the closest chimp.

"Dinosaur smell," signed Tattler.

Mike frowned. "Huh?"

"Dinosaurs," echoed Glutton seriously. "Dinosaurs again."

"There's no such thing as dinosaurs anymore."

The chimps regarded him sceptically.

"...Are there?"

A sound began to permeate the forest, and it caused all of the little hairs all over Mike's body to stand on end. The chimps hooted worriedly. In the distance, something giant growled. Mike could feel it through his boots.

His eyes narrowed. He shook his head, then whistled loudly. "Recon squad -- form up!"

The reconnaissance squad moved carefully through the bush with Mike at the head flanked by two roving-eyed young males carrying stone-tipped spears. As they proceeded westward the Earth-rumbling growl clarified into the rumble and chortle of machines at work: the noise grew steadily louder, and soon Mike could detect the acrid perfume of diesel, oil and exhaust.

They stopped at the riverbank. Beyond a thin line of scrub on the opposite side, a clearing was being razed. An occluding blanket of tan dust was swept aside by the breeze and then Mike saw them: massive vehicles in grime-speckled red, orange and yellow -- all the gay colours of the dirtiest, grandest machines of heavy industry. Those closest to the river flexed cavernous metal scoops on the end of long, articulated necks, carving gouges in the ground.

"Bad dinosaurs," signed Flirt somberly.

Mike didn't know how to feel. The tree-smashing, root-tearing work of the machines was terrifying, loud and violent -- yet on the other hand his heart skipped a beat when he saw the distant figures of human beings moving between them, waving and calling to each other, their aluminium coffee flasks flashing in the morning sun.

"Holy crap," whispered Mike. "People!"

Mike had sighted the workers, and the workers had sighted the chimps. There was a flash as someone's field glasses reflected, and then a few of the men jogged over to a giant dump-truck's cab and hopped down again with rifles. Mike signalled a hasty retreat. The chimps looked at him in confusion. "Guns!" said Mike, signing ferverently.

The chimps scratched their heads. Clearly, in their prior life there had been no call or desire for them to possess a firearms vocabulary.

Edgar, however, came to appreciate firearms in a visceral way as he was shot in the chest. He tumbled over backward without making a sound, and when Mike turned him over he found his face frozen in an attitude of surprise. Blood chugged steadily from the hole in his torso, pooling under the ape's armpit. The echoes of the firing had yet to fade completely from the air and Edgar was already well dead.

The workers cheered. Mike looked up. The chimps around him were fleeing, crashing headlong and carelessly into the bush behind him, howling in fear. In seconds they were gone.

The workers splashed across the river.

They were white men. They murmured to each other in South African English as they toed Edgar's corpse with their workboots. "Ag man, that was some shot," said one. "You pegged that monkey like it was right in front of you. Aweh!"

"It's not a monkey, it's a chimp."

"Same difference, baas. Is it any good to eat?"

"Naw. Kaffirs'll probably eat it anyway, though. Might as well drag it round. You lot: get this in the bakkie."

When Mike saw the rude way the men hefted Edgar like a sack of sticks it took every ounce of self-control to keep him from leaping down out of the tree branches above them to throttle someone. He flexed his hands ruefully, feeling the familiar ache in his right from the moist air. He knew any action would be regrettable: he was no match for four armed men alone.

Mike watched them go, teeth clenched. They slogged across the river and joshed with each other as they hauled the body up the opposite bank and then swung it on the count of three into the back of a truck.

"One, two, three." Boom!

Mike closed his eyes.

When he returned to the hilltop the chimps greeted him with anxious looks and worried pants. He told them Edgar was gone, and that the men who rode the dinosaurs had killing sticks that could take away any one of them. The chimps were scared. "What do?" asked Climber, grabbing Mike's shoulder. "Where hide?"

"We have nowhere to go," answered Mike slowly. "There is nowhere to hide. The dinosaurs are eating the forest. They may even want to eat our hill."

They chimps drew close to one another. Many of them reached out to touch Mike for comfort. "What do?" asked Climber again, shaking his head. A dozen sets of brown eyes rested on Mike, wide and pleading.

The ambient sounds of the forest were suddenly very loud. Mike's heart was pounding in his chest. He swallowed, then put his chin up.

"We fight," he declared crisply. "We make war. We stop the dinosaurs."

5/6

The subterfuge was, in a word, hilarious.

Mike watched from a safe distance through his recently purloined field glasses, witnessing a pantomime in which two chimps brazenly approached the camp of four researchers from the National Geographic Society and began performing various antics. One chimp climbed aboard the shoulders of his companion and then the tottering, living totem wobbled around stiffly, the upper chimp offering his hand to shake and pretending to doff an invisible hat.

The researchers were shocked and instantly engaged. They fell over themselves to grab their cameras from their cases, to dangle microphones by the chimps, to jot hurried notes into their books. Mike grinned, knowing what was coming next.

In an homage to a classic episode of Star Trek, the chimps hopped apart and then dragged from the bushes a piece of limestone into which Mike had laboriously carved the words: NO KILL I. The chimps stood on either side of the limestone and slowly, clearly signed over and over again, "Life precious, life precious."

Despite the distance Mike distinctly heard one of the researchers cry out, "Oh my God!"

Mike turned from the field glasses to give Climber a curt nod. "Take your team in."

While the National Geographic researchers were entirely hypnotized by the chimps' apparent plea for interspecies clemency, Climber and his team slunk through the grass with clods of weeds strapped to their heads. Climber slipped inside the equipment tent. A moment later he reappeared and began handing out items one by one to be ferried back by his teammates: four air-rifles and eight boxes of tranquilizer darts.

Climber whistled like a Zuma songbird, then scooted quietly after the team. At this signal the performing chimps seemed to suddenly become bored with the researchers; they simply dropped their hands, turned around, and scampered off into the bush. The researchers looked at each other in surprise and disappointment, then fell to examining the limestone.

The chimps regrouped with Mike by the stream. "Good work," smiled Mike. "Let's have lunch."

Chimpanzees are always enthusiastic about lunch. They pant-hooted in delight and made a headlong dash for the hilltop.

"That was awesome," said Mike to Climber. "Keep it up, and I'll promote you to man."

Climber saluted and then scrambled off after the others.

Mike took a moment to lolligag by the scarecrows. Upon close inspection they wouldn't fool a one-eyed man with cataracts, but from a reasonable distance they were sufficient to give a roving band of rival apes pause. The scarecrows were made of stolen sandbags stuffed with leaves, dressed in fluorescent yellow safety vests; each stood at guard with a long stick in place of a gun. They were connected to the beaters' rope network, and thus could be caused from a remote distance to shimmy and quiver in an aggressive if faintly epileptic fashion.

With Mike's focus diverted to the dinosaurs, they had been forced to resort to semi-automatic defenses such as these to keep the territory clear. There wasn't enough attention to go around.

The days were busy.

Mike hiked up the hill. Preparations were well under way for tonight's daring sortie. For weeks Mike and his troglodyte kin had been waging an unrelenting campaign against the clear-cutting and construction efforts, and as of last night their opponents had upped the ante by dispatching round the clock patrols of security guards armed with guns and machetes, dour-faced skinny black men who smoked Chinese cigarettes and muttered to each other in a guttural, choppy-sounding language Mike couldn't fathom in the least.

He had reasoned that attacking the machines themselves would be a poor strategy. If the men could not work, they would have nothing to do all day but beat the bushes in search of the vandals. Instead, Mike had directed the campaign toward the supplies: by constantly interfering with the flow of food, drink and tobacco, the workers became disgruntled at their employer's failure to contain the situation and their insistence that work continue uninterrupted. So the men worked, and as the days went by they hated their employers more than the unseen saboteurs.

Mike had seen the fat airplanes come in. He knew the men had recently been resupplied. Thus, it was his plan to disrupt their sense of hope at its zenith, to foul the water and steal the food and burn the cigarettes just when the men were about to feel bolstered and relieved. He was optimistic this sudden reversal in fortune would persuade them to rebel against their employers, to initiate a work stoppage.

The only trick would be to incapacitate the armed guards before they could act. Hence, the tranquilizer rifles.

Mike checked on the chimps, overseeing their work. They no longer jingled as they moved, for Mike had long ago figured out how to break their collars. Their identification tags now hung over their hammocks. He took a few moments to roll around in the dirt with the juveniles, then made sure poor Glutton was comfortable, lying in a hammock with a splint on his fractured leg. "Looks like it's healing up nicely," said Mike.

"Itchy," signed Glutton gloomily. "Hungry."

"You're always hungry."

"Itchy," the chimp repeated sullenly.

Mike found a twig and carefully fed it into the dressing, then scratched at Glutton's leg. "Better?"

Glutton closed his eyes and sighed with contentment. "Love M," he gestured vaguely, yawning.

"I love you too, Glutton."

The afternoon aged. The sun began to sink. The voice of the forest slowly changed from daytime sounds to twilight sounds. The suppertime flowers exuded their stink as the dinosaurs' growls quieted one by one. The men laughed and swore and smoked as they parked their vehicles and ambled back toward their camp in the river valley. The new security guards passed them in the dirt-clod fields, but they did not exchange greetings. The two kinds of men were as alien to one another as chimpanzees and monkeys.

The sky was still pink, but the land was in shadow. Mike gave a nod to his troupe. "Let's move."

A tall, lanky security guard with a shaved head leaned on his rifle as he smoked, watching birds flock over the trees. Every few moments he spat in the dirt and shifted his pose. Mike hunkered low in the grass in order to silhouette the man against the sky for a clear shot, then squeezed the trigger: the air rifle barked. The guard grunted, slapped at his thigh, found the dart, then whimpered quietly and folded into an unruly pile.

"Wow," whispered Mike. "That was fast. This stuff must be dosed for rhinos or something."

He slunk along to the next sighting spot while a trio of chimps scampered over the sleeping guard and headed for the nearest supply trailer. The next guard took a little longer to succumb than the first, but within five minutes he had ceased crawling along in the dirt and had rolled over onto his side with his thumb jammed in his mouth, snoring loudly.

The next team headed for the water locker. When a third guard fell, the final team made for the shed where the daytime rations of cigarettes were stored along with the odd bottle of liquor for the foremen. The chimps had already learned to use the liquor to spread the fire, though they often went through four or five boxes of matches before getting a good strike. They tended to break the matches.

Mike was wiggling up to the fourth and final guard when the water locker erupted in a riot of noise: tumbling plastic vats, smashing bottles, hollering chimps. The guard's head snapped over. "Eh!" he called, unslinging his rifle.

Mike fired his own rifle but missed. The guard was running now, bearing down on the locker. Mike scrambled to his feet and beat the ground after him, propelled by worry.

The guard reached the locker and threw open the doors. Mike accelerated. The guard disappeared inside.

Heart hammering in his chest, Mike slid in the mud in front of the locker and sprawled awkwardly to the ground. He flipped himself over and then pawed through the darkness for his air rifle. He looked up just in time to see the guard ejected bodily from the locker, flying over his head in a high arc, then crashing down to the ground with a loud crack of breaking bone.

Two chimps burst out of the locker, roaring.

"Holy crap you guys are strong," breathed Mike with relief.

Suddenly the field was illuminated by rows of floodlights on wooden poles. Grimacing and howling, the chimps threw their hands over their eyes. Mike tried to blink away the throbbing afterimages as a distant klaxon began to ring. The tossed guard was talking quickly into a radio, his repeated cries urgent.

Mike stood up and whistled with his fingers. "Retreat!"

Together the troupe barrelled across the field, making for the far fringes ninety-degrees removed from the actual direction of their home hill -- this was a practiced piece of deception meant to confuse anyone bright enough to try to track their prints the next morning, to lead them astray. This path also took them dangerously close to the territory of their troglodyte rivals and they usually made their approach stealthily. Tonight, however, they dashed aside the leaves and fled in an adrenaline-powered panic.

There were consequences. They were heard.

Mike detected the growl of jeeps in the blazingly-bright field behind them just as the bush ahead shook. Eyes reflected in the dark, and then the night was cut by aggressive howls. One by one Mike's troupe fell from their flight, knocked aside by rival chimps. In the dark the various tussles were a scintillating blur. Mike felt helpless and terrified. He swung his air rifle in vicious arcs, smacking aside the attackers and then shouting to keep them at bay while his kin made their frenzied escapes deeper into the forest.

Mike found himself surrounded by a ring of belligerent chimpanzees, and he considered that he may have just traded his life to save his friends. He took a deep breath and steadied the rifle in his hands, wielding it in a defensive stance as if it were a quarterstaff.

Seconds later, he was alone.

Mike blinked, hearing his assailants rushing away in a froth of leaf-ripping, twig-snapping urgency. "What in the --"

Someone clubbed him across the back of the head with something heavy. Mike dropped to his knees, his vision turning grey. "Crap," he managed to mumble before he dropped on his face...

He came to under the harsh buzz of cheap fluorescents. His head hurt a lot, and the back of his neck was sticky. Mike groaned.

"Baas, he's waking up!"

Mike was sprawled in a plastic chair inside a cramped trailer alongside filing cabinets, two messy desks and a battery of overflowing ashtrays. Three white men and two skinny guards were arrayed around him, their faces hard. One of the white men pushed closer, rolling a toothpick from one side of his lined mouth to the other. "What are you supposed to be then, eh? Some kind of Tarzan?"

Mike blinked, his head ringing.

"Answer me!" the man shouted, then slapped Mike across the face.

Mike was not bound but he was badly outnumbered and feeling not at all well. He thought he might throw up, and decided he might have a fairly serious concussion. With an awful, heavy feeling he recognized that he was on the cusp of re-entering that state he had vowed he never find himself in again: helpless, hopeless, imprisoned at the mercy of men of meagre moral fibre.

He said the first thing that popped into his head: his name, rank, and serial number.

"He's some kind of a soldier, baas," said one of the men.

The one with the toothpick grunted noncommitally. "What the hell is a Chinese soldier doing out here?"

"I'm not Chinese," rasped Mike weakly. "I'm Canadian."

"He sure looks Chinese, baas."

"I'm with the Allies," managed Mike.

"The Allies sent you to sabotage us?" demanded the toothpick man. "What's your mission, Tarzan? You'd better start talking now or you'll find yourself looking down at your tongue on the floor. Got that, doos?"

"Not on an Allied mission..."

"Gunther: give me your knife. This chink gwar needs some persuading, man."

Mike's breathing became quick and shallow. Sweat beaded on his brow. One of the men unsnapped a leather holster at his hip and withdrew a shiny blade that sang as it was freed. Its keen edge winked in the light. Gunther passed the blade to his boss, who spat out his toothpick onto the floor and gave Mike a terrible, cruel grin.

Mike felt a thousand times more dread than he had in the hands of the Allied jackals, for then it was only his own health he feared for. Now, in this new moment, he knew his failure would cost the lives of all his friends. Without Mike's help, they didn't stand a chance against men.

The boss paused in his advance, then cocked his head. The others did, too. Mike heard it: the sound of engines starting up. Machines rumbled and metal clanked.

"...What the hell?"

The engines roared suddenly closer. The boss ducked aside to look out the window but before he got there the entire trailer shook on its cinderblock foundations, rocking dangerously and casting file folders from their shelves in a slurry of hissing paper. The men were knocked off their feet and Mike spilled from his chair.

The trailer was struck again, the long wall denting. The lights went out and the trailer continued to lean, then keeled over completely and crashed down on its side. Furniture and cigarette butts rained to the new floor, battering the guards and the white men who cried out in alarm.

Acting on instinct, Mike threw himself toward the dark corner where he remembered the door to be. He caught its edges and hauled himself up, pushing out to the top of the teetering trailer and getting to his feet.

The flood-lit field was in chaos. Heavy equipment rumbled in all directions, turning in place, swinging their implements nonsensically, changing speeds, stopping and starting seemingly at random. It all began to make sense when Mike spotted Climber hanging out of the cab of a massive backhoe, waving his arms and roaring.

Mike realized that he was being rescued.

In the cabs of the other vehicles chimps were attacking the controls, pulling and pushing levers, tugging on the steering wheels, stabbing buttons with reckless abandon. "Holy crap!" yelled Mike. He jammed his fingers into his mouth and whistled for retreat.

The chimps saw him. With hoots of delight they abandoned their vehicles, leaping off as they continued to move, then scampering across the dirt toward the trailer. Hearing signs of life inside of it Mike jumped down and met them halfway, then coordinated their flight toward the woods. The chimps paused near him, wanting to touch him and coo, but Mike cast off their hands. "Go, go, go!" he screamed.

They went. Mike was about to fling himself after them when he saw that Climber was still inside his vehicle, eyes wide as a fleet of workers ran toward him and began climbing the treads of the still rolling machine. Climber screeched in fright and climbed on top of the cab. He threw bits of gravel at the workers and beat his chest.

"Climber! Jump!" yelled Mike.

The workers turned to his voice. "Shoot him!" called someone, and a dozen rifles clicked as they were cocked. Mike dropped to the dirt a split second before the air resounded with the overlapping cracks of gunfire.

He wormed his way into a ditch and then risked a look back. Climber hadn't been hit: the shots were aimed at Mike. Instead, Climber was grabbed by the leg and pulled down from the cab. He hit the treads hard and was then struck with the butt-end of rifles, forcing him into a large sack which was cinched up tight once he was inside. The workers kicked at the sack until it stopped moving.

Mike felt as if his heart were being ripped from his chest. He was immobilized by pain and horror, but regained his senses as another group of guards starting running toward the ditch he was in with flashlights and guns.

There was no choice to be made except to survive. Mike ran. There were a few more shots fired in his direction, and he heard the leaves tear around him as he tumbled into the cover of the forest. He pushed himself to keep going, reminding himself how many other chimps were counting on his leadership tonight.

Soon the fracas was behind him. With great weariness he plodded up to the hilltop, tears welling in his eyes as he met the gazes of his troupe. "Climber's been captured," he signed with shaking hands. "They took him."

"What do?" the chimps wanted to know. "What do, M?"

Mike sighed. He sat down beside the fire-pit, his head in his hands. The chimps gathered around him, whimpering worriedly. Mike looked up after a long moment. "You guys risked your lives to save me," he said slowly. "So, really, there's only one thing we can do."

Bella nodded seriously. "Plan," she signed.

"Yes," Mike agreed. "You're right, Bella. If we're going to save Climber, we'll need a plan. A really smart one, too."

"M smart smart."

Mike closed his eyes. "I don't feel very smart tonight," he said forlornly.

The chimps closed around him, and lay their hands on his shoulders, on his back, on his legs. They shut their eyes and gently knocked their heads against him, snorting affectionately.

"But I'll think of something," promised Mike. "I swear."

6/6

The preparations for the exodus were, in a word, grim.

An exodus was required: that much was plain to Mike. Each day the gaily coloured, mud-dripping dinosaurs tore deeper into the forest with their lockstep march of slash, burn, churn and level. A constant pall of dust hung over the treeline, making visible the slanted rays of the sun. Birds fled in swirling clouds, squawking.

The fight to defend their Eden was childish, Mike knew, and ultimately doomed. He could not continue to risk the lives of his troglodyte brethren to buy another hour or an afternoon. The slow life had a deadline, and its far side promised misery for them all.

They would have to leave. That there might be nowhere to go was somewhat beside the point -- Mike wasn't even sure where they were in the first place. In philosophical desperation, he decided that meeting their fate on their feet was better than waiting for it to come and take them. Mad flight was preferable to despondent suicide, futile action better than sad stagnance.

There's hope in activity. There's optimism when the plan has yet to fail.

They worked furiously. Each chimpanzee in the troupe was fitted with a rope-woven knapsack for the females to ferry the young and for the males to ferry supplies: dried berries, roots, nuts, and plastic canteens of water stolen from the construction zone; also pelts to stave off the elements, also stone-tipped spears, also triple-wrapped boxes of matches and faggots of prepared kindling. Lastly, each was fitted with a matching hat and cloak of bundled grasses as camouflage.

When the time came, they looked not so much like a gang of chimps but a parade of hunch-backed shrubberies.

Their initial route was perilous. Mike's forays to the adjoining hilltops showed that they were hemmed in by a wide, yellow-brown river's convolutions on three sides. He did not have confidence in his abilities to engineer a raft sufficiently safe to cut across the swift, silty flow. That meant the only viable vector of escape involved crossing the construction zone to whatever lay beyond.

On the day before their planned exeunt he encouraged the chimps to eat fit to burst. On this account they were not difficult to persuade. He wanted them to start off on the right foot -- well fed, feeling strong, feeling able. That night around their beloved fire-pit they chanted in rhythm and drummed rocks against rocks.

When the moon rose they paused to gaze at it. It was no longer a crescent but a nearly full face; never the less, the chimps knew the crescent was there, hiding on one sharp edge of the silver celestial coin. They reverently mimed the peeling of their index fingers. "Banana," they said. "Banana sky banana."

Mike lay back in his hammock, staring into nothing. He shivered.

He would miss this view of the dark branches crossing over his head in a way he had never fathomed he could miss anything -- even his former life, even his new wife, even the smirk and froth and tumble of days among men. Everything had an aura of finality to it, from the chirping of the evening insects to the wet smell of the forest's fragrant dusk.

He sat up. All eyes were upon him. "Okay," said Mike quietly. "Let's go."

He didn't look back. He couldn't.

The procession wound its way down the face of the hill and then gathered into a clot at the edge of the clear-cut field of dirt where the dinosaurs slept and the lanky guards patrolled. "Stay together," he reminded them. "Go slowly. And if something happens, freeze. If they start to shoot, hug the ground. If I tell you to run, run without looking back."

The chimps grunted their assent. Mike could hear their fingers whisper against each other, but in the dark he could not see their signs.

"Okay," he said again, then swallowed.

They waited for the first guard to saunter past their position, then felled him with a tranquilizer dart. Mike carefully stripped off his skins and ragged pants and then dressed himself with some difficulty in the skinny guard's tight uniform. He hitched up the black leather belt and then used the attached flashlight to take careful inventory of the equipment he'd acquired: a radio, a whistle, a rifle, a wallet containing a few crumpled bills and a magnetic-strip card that was otherwise featureless. He unloaded the rifle and discarded it.

The chimps covered the sleeping guard in leaves, and then the party pushed on across the open dirt. Mike's radio muttered but he couldn't understand the language. The chatter was casual and intermittent.

They all looked up as they passed beneath the sleeping construction machines, their long necks casting stripes of shadow in the moonlight, their metal bodies matte with clods of mud. The chimps sniffed, detecting a lingering perfume of petroleum and men.

They were closing on the far line of utility poles that held up the flood-lights, now unilluminated. A loosely-slung electrical cable swayed between the poles, caught in a gentle breeze. The chimps hesitated. The sinewy motion of the cable disturbed them.

"Snakes," signed Tattler, taking Mike's hands to put the words into them.

"No," whispered Mike. "It's like a rope. Nothing to be afraid of." He paused, reconsidering this. "Just don't touch them, okay?"

The apes regarded him dubiously, then suddenly went stock still. Mike blinked, then turned around. His breath caught in his throat as he spotted a security guard jogging over to him, his expression lost in the dark. Mike's hand went the air rifle slung over his shoulder, his senses opening and quickening with the familiar terrified tickle of engagement.

"Hey!"

Mike unslung the rifle.

The guard slowed to an amble and said something very African. Mike looked at him blankly. The guard chuckled and batted aside Mike's rifle. "You speak English?" he asked.

"Some," said Mike.

"You got a light? A match?" the guard asked. He had a hand-rolled cigarette dangling from his thick lips. He patted down his own pockets to emphasize his point.

Mike gave him a box of matches. The guard struck one, momentarily revealing his features to Mike. "They bringing in all sorts of guys, huh?" he mumbled around the cigarette as he puffed it alive. "I'm all the way from Sierra Leone. The name's Barry."

"John. From Madagascar."

Barry scratched his head and made a face as he stared at the line of shrubberies lined up behind Mike. "They're doing landscaping here already? Man, these guys are all about the fast. You hear me? All about it."

"Yeah."

"And you're guarding these bushes, man?"

Mike cleared his throat. "Yeah," he said again. "Until dawn."

Barry shook his head. "These guys are some crazy guys, man. All hush-hush and fast-fast. Up to some crazy business I have no doubts. None, John!"

"Me neither, Barry."

"I got to keep on my walking, man. You take it easy."

"See you."

Slightly shaking with disbelief Mike panned his head to watch the guard saunter away along the row of utility poles. One of the juveniles squeaked. Mike hissed, "Is everybody okay?"

The bushes nodded. Mike gave a quiet whistle and started onward again.

The landscape changed around them. The mounds of dirt gave way to silhouettes with rectilinear features, and the sound of their footfalls sharpened and started to echo off surrounding faces. There were many construction machines parked here too, but they were smaller and more nimble. There were cars, as well, parked on the sides of a rudely paved tongue of road. Arrayed on either side were groups of trailers on cinderblocks, many of them with lighted windows, some of them leaking tinny music.

Mike called a halt and waited for the slowest of the shrubberies to catch up. "The workers are still awake. We must go very quietly. Stay low. If you hear any sound, freeze."

The party crawled between the trailers, choosing corridors of darkness where possible. Inside some of the dark trailers they could hear snoring. They froze when someone ducked into an alley they were crossing to urinate, letting go their collective breath only once he'd shaken it off and stumbled back to bed.

They were nearly at the last row of trailers. Mike slowed to let everyone regroup behind. He cocked his head. There was something in the low blur of intermingling noise from the trailers that caught his attention, but he could not define it.

The chimps could. They heard Climber.

"Are you sure?" asked Mike worriedly.

They collectively pant-hooted an enthusiastic affirmative.

"Shut up! Shut up!"

It did not take them long to hone in on Climber's location. On the corner of the very last row were two long trailers connected together, slightly removed from the mass of other accommodations. It squatted in the shadow of a tall plywood wall, and from a slightly open window came the murmur of human voices cut occasionally by a troglodyte whimper.

"Stay here. I'll scout."

Mike crawled across the dirt on his belly until he was beneath the window, tucked in beyond the reach of the rectangle of yellow light shining out. The trailer swayed slightly as a man paced across its floor. "I knew you were fond of the animals, so when I he