Episode 113. Part 4
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Apparently Taylor hears Christian arrive because she immediately changes back to intelligible human speech.
Taylor: There, there, I know it’s a long trip.
Christian: Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you.
Taylor: (looking up) Yes?
Christian: I just thought that having someone here with you while all this is happening—just in case—might is a good idea.
Taylor: Well my friends here are all the company I need, but if you wish to stay, that’s fine.
Christian: I appreciate that.
Christian asks Taylor to introduce him to the apes, because he’s interested in meeting them. She happily does so, describing their personalities and accomplishments in glowing detail. It’s obvious that she’s very fond of them. Nothing, however, that would be unusual for a middle-aged woman who spends all her time hanging around apes.
Meanwhile, Nika hangs out in the galley with a cup of coffee waiting for Cesar to finish eating his breakfast. Mike and Rina wait quietly with her. Cesar scrapes up the last of his meal with his fork, puts it down and stands up. Nika hears him stir, puts her cup down and steps out of the galley.
Nika: Um, Cesar? Dr. Arden would like to go ahead and take a look at you if you have time. We have a policy of making sure everyone’s immunizations are up to speed before we make landing. He’s asked me to make sure that both you and Dr. Taylor have your immunization packets finished.
Cesar: No, I don’t think I’ll be—That’s okay.
Nika: I’m afraid it’s ship policy.
Cesar: (quietly) I don’t think that’s a good idea…to get immunized.
Nika: Why not?
Cesar: I’ve got some allergies and standard immunization packets—
Nika: Of course, by all means tell Dr. Arden about what’s going on with your allergies and—
Cesar: Sure, I’ll talk to Dr. Arden.
Nika: Sure. C’mon.
Nika lets the sarcasm slide right on by as she steps up, smiles brightly and takes his arm in a chummy way. He’s got no graceful way to refuse, no way to get out of it now without lookin suspicious. Nika leads him aft to the med bay and he goes right along with her. Once inside, Arden gives him the standard paper examination gown and tells him to put it on. Cesar balks. Why does he have to undress for shots? Nika asks Arden to check Cesar’s immunization record and make sure he’s up to date and oh, could you check him out more thoroughly because Cesar looks extremely tired. Maybe it’s an iron thing?
Cesar: Listen, I’d rather not. I have allergies to the immunization packets.
Arden: You do have allergies? Then I have to examine you.
Cesar: Um, no…
Arden: Yes.
Cesar: No.
Nika: I’ll leave you two to it.
Cesar: No. I’m not going to take that…I don’t want to be examined.
Nika has to put her foot down. She recalls the passenger manifest and Cesar’s last name.
Nika: Mr. Allgood. You can either do what Dr. Arden needs you to do and cooperate fully, or I can have Mr. Carter come in and he can sit on you while Dr. Arden does what he needs to do.
Cesar: I take it we lost all our rights when we got on board this ship. All right. Whaddya need, Doc?
Arden hands Cesar the paper gown.
Nika: Dr. Arden? Mr. Carter will be in the hallway if there’s any trouble.
Cesar: Can I have some privacy?
Arden: (pointing) Bathroom’s right there.
When Cesar steps inside and the door is closed, Nika asks Mike to stay and make sure that nothing goes wrong. Mike agrees. Nika leaves. Arden talks to Cesar through the bathroom door, asking about the allergies the man has. Cesar laughs and replies: all the good ones.
And from the bathroom comes a resounding thunk!
Arden beats Mike to the bathroom and they find Cesar laid out cold in the bathtub. The spigot is bloodied and it’s obvious what’s happened: the man knocked himself out to avoid being examined. One can only imagine what he thought we were going to do to him to warrant such an extreme action. Arden examines him and finds the man is suffering from a head wound and a serious concussion. Mike helps Arden transfer Cesar to the examination bed and Arden starts prepping his patient for surgery.
At least Cesar is out for the count and no longer able to make trouble.
Nika ducks in at the commotion, is shocked at what Arden tells her what’s happened and ducks back out. Rina’s in the hallway.
Rina: What?
Nika: (incredulous) He tried to kill himself on the spigot….
Rina: (grimly) Did he do it? Or was he made to do it?
Nika: At this point, I’m not even sure I know!
Rina: (pointing forward) I’m not going in there with those apes. You’re gonna have to draft somebody else to feed them.
Nika: So far as I can tell those apes don’t have a thing to do with this. I mean they’re bright creatures, smarter than cows, smarter than horses…but… monkeys controlling people’s brains? C’mon! I mean, forcing humans to be compliant? (Points to Mike assisting Arden) Sure. I can buy that. The Miranda Wave? Sure, I can buy that. But monkeys controlling people’s brains? Not sure I can buy that one.
Rina: As a wise man once said, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamed of.” But I agree; it is a bit farfetched.
Nika: Someone else also said, “When you’ve ruled out all the improbabilities, then whatever’s left—“
Rina: “—however impossible, must be the truth.” Yes. I’ve read that one.
Nika: We haven’t gotten to where monkey telepathy does it for me. As an explanation.
Nika shakes her head and goes into the med bay to offer Arden her assistance. Mike and Rina clear out to give the two some room. As for the patient, Cesar has messed himself up, and good. There are shattered slivers of bone imbedded in his brain from the impact and they will have to be removed. Luckily, nothing major in the way of neurological pathways will have to be reconstructed. Even so, brain injuries are not to be taken lightly, and brain surgery is extremely finicking work. Arden rolls up his sleeves and gets to it.
Rina takes Mike and together they search Cesar’s quarters.
After the surgery’s completed and the patient is secured, Arden runs some tests on some blood samples he’s pulled from Cesar. White blood cells, red, plasma…some evidence of several stimulants, nothing more addictive than caffeine or No-Doze. However, there is something odd: there is another substance in his system that doesn’t come up on the medical database. Arden can tell it’s a psychotropic of some kind but not like the usual sort of hallucinogenic. It’s more in line with brain drugs. He tells the others about the stimulants and goes back to looking for more information on the Cortex. There might be some information on the type of psychotropic he’s found in Cesar’s system. On the off-chance Cesar wakes up violent—hard to envision, given his injuries, but still...—Arden puts his patient in restraints.
Tossing Cesar’s quarters is the work of a few minutes. Rina and Mike don’t even bother hiding the fact they’ve done it—Cesar has already holds everyone suspect, else he wouldn’t have brained himself on the tub fixtures. The man didn’t pack much. He has a suitcase and in it, Rina and Mike find a stash of pills. Mindful of the fact that addicts are extremely paranoid about their stash, Rina gets inventive with her searching, knowing that Cesar wouldn’t have put all his eggs in one basket. She searches all the nooks and crannies, pries off panels to peer into the spaces behind and beneath. If it can be reasonably managed with a screwdriver standing on a chair, she opens it up and looks. Working around her, Mike searches the more conventional places and finds a package knife stashed under the mattress, a slightly fancier model of box cutter. Cesar’s clothes get the once-over next. Mike finds nothing in them beyond the normal sorts of pocket litter. There is, however, a telling lack of something: Cesar’s card key is missing.
Rina and Mike leave off the search, there being nothing more to learn, and take the pills they’ve found to Arden once the surgery is over. They and Arden, Christian, and Nika hold a quick conference on the bridge where they can’t be seen by the others.
Arden: Was the card key in his quarters?
Rina: No.
Arden: And it wasn’t on him in there. (jerks a thumb toward the med bay).
Nika: Wait—the ape card key?
Arden: As far as I can tell. Assuming he had one.
Nika: I would think so. He fed them.
Arden: Right.
So where the hell is it? We check the bathroom, in case he’d hidden it in there before braining himself. The bathroom yields nothing. Christian mentions Cesar had the key on him when he fed the apes earlier. Christian remembers seeing it then.
Nika: Okay, just to feed the paranoia, but how close to the monkeys did he get with that card key?
Rina: He fed them. Pretty damn close.
Christian says Cesar got close enough that the apes could have grabbed him.
Christian: You want to feed the paranoia? When I went in there, she had her forehead against one of them and she was babbling nonsense. And not like baby kind of nonsense. More like the kind found in horror movies where the person’s eyes turn completely black and they start babbling in some bizarre ancient dead language. That kind.
Rina: That’s bad.
Arden: I’ll take your word for it.
Nika: “How bad? Tell him about the twinkie, Ray.”
Rina: This is the shit-hitting-the-fan-cross-yourself-click-your-heels-and-wish-to-go-home bad.
Christian: “We’re looking at a twinkie—”
Rina: “—the size of Manhattan” bad.
Arden: I’m so confused.
Christian remembers the key card was on a cord around Cesar’s neck, but is fairly certain Cesar did not have the key on him when they left the container and went belowdecks to talk. It’s completely possible that one of the apes has lifted it.
Nika: So you’re telling me that one of the monkeys actually picked his pocket? Really? You know, I was mostly kidding when I asked that question.
Christian: It’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Nika: I was kidding!
Christian: To be fair, it’s not outside the possibility of normal, regularly intelligenced apes to have figured out that the key card can open their cages, and used it.
Rina: Oh great. What do you do with an eight-hundred pound gorilla? Whatever the hell it wants.
Arden: I knew I grew up in a sheltered society, but is this stuff normal?
Everyone else: (at the same time) No!
Nika: Right now, we’re so far outside the bounds of normal….
And speaking of outside the bounds of normal, Arden tells us about the unidentifiable drug he’d found in Cesar’s system. Christian suggests that the only drugs that can’t be found on the medical databases on the Cortex would be the highly experimental ones.
We all remember what Taylor had said about the experimental drugs being used on the apes. What would happen if you were injected with the same experimental drugs the apes were getting?
Rina: Don’t go there.
Arden: You would be highly alert.
Christian: Or super over-alert?
Nika: Seriously, not that the monkeys are controlling anybody, but what if the people who were dealing with the monkeys—like Dr. Taylor and Mr. Allgood—were taking some kind of a drug…and he came off of it?
Arden: I would like to know if Dr. Taylor is on whatever this psychotropic drug is.
Nika: Precisely.
Christian: I’m going to postulate two theories. One: This is some kind of odd experiment and the monkeys are a blind. We’ll assume the apes are not super-intelligent or telepathic. The experiment is actually to see the effect of the drug on people. Two: Do the apes have to be intelligent? If they are intelligent, do they have to be telepathic? Is it possible they can give someone the drug, the drug will make them compliant to their desires—and we already know there are drugs that will do that—
Nika: Are you positing that the monkey are giving the doctors the drug?
Arden: It’s the delivery method.
Christian: Certainly. (To Arden) Is there any similarity to Chempliance?
Arden: I doubt it.
It works on similar parts of the brain, but based on its chemical structure, Arden surmises that it has the opposite effect of Chempliance. Instead of canceling out the self-governing abilities of the subject, it would possibly reinforce them. Making Cesar’s motive for taking the drugs understandable, since the man felt he was being forced to do things against his will, why not reinforce his ability to resist?
Hard on that statement, Nika brings up another worrying possibility: Dr. Taylor is with the apes and unsupervised. If the apes have Cesar’s key card, they can release themselves and we would very soon find we’ve lost control of our ship. The words are no sooner out her mouth when we hear a loud noise coming aft and to port.
Port, where the apes’ container lies.
Rina and Nika are the only ones armed, still packing from their alarm in the middle of the night, and those guns are up and out. Nika takes point. Rina backs her up. Arden follows and when they reach the doorway to the forward passenger lounge, he ducks into the passage leading to the stairs and seals the door, blocking access to the weapons locker and the airlock. Once it’s secured, Arden goes aft belowdecks to lock down the hatches in the aft transverse corridor to keep anyone from getting below us. Christian stays on the bridge to guard it against takeover. Mike immediately goes for the galley, to get at the knives stored there.
Nika and Rina manage to take only a few steps more before something emerges from the apes’ container. It’s Maximus, leaning against the doorway like a nightclub bouncer. There is no getting to the container or to the jettison controls now—the ape is blocking them with his body. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. No telling what the drugs have done to their brains. Nika murmurs out the corner of her mouth to Rina, keeping her eyes forward on Maximus.
Nika: I can’t believe I’m doing this. Where is Dr. Taylor?
As the women watch, an orangutan hand comes down on Maximus’ shoulder and the rest of the animal comes into view. It’s Zira and she lopes easily toward us. She starts signing to us and Nika shakes her head.
Nika: I don’t know sign language. I need the doctor to translate. I can’t understand what you’re saying.
Zira nods, and pulls a “hmmm” face. She extends her hand toward Nika and Nika backs up a step.
Nika: I’m a little nervous. I would very much like to see Dr. Taylor please.
Christian moves forward and pokes his head out the door. Nika keeps her eyes on Zira.
Nika: Chris…Stay back, please.
Zira extends her hand to Nika again, mutely insistent.
Nika: Rina, if she does anything that even remotely looks like she’s going to snap my neck, please take her out.
Rina: On it.
And Nika takes Zira’s hand. Zira holds it gently and looks aside at Rina—and shakes her head at the woman and her gun. Rina doesn’t budge an inch. Zira leads Nika further into the lounge. Rina’s torn: Zira isn’t violent and at the moment isn’t harming her friend, yet the urge to shoot is clawing at Rina’s trigger finger. Zira releases Nika and points to a chair. The message is clear: sit down. Nika doesn’t resist Zira but, seriously silently freaked, she moves with the hyper-awareness of combat, ready to seize the advantage the moment it presents itself. For now, it’s best to do as asked and watch what Zira does next. Rina shifts along the wall to get a better view of Nika and Zira, and keeps her gun up.
Christian stays his ground, despite Nika’s orders, and eyes the gorilla standing at the container door. He can see Rina trying to keep an eye on both the ape and the orangutan, and so far, Maximus is content with guard duty. Christian hopes he stays that way.
Below decks, Arden is testing the lock on the armory door—secured. And kicks himself: he was on the bridge, he should have taken the armory key. Had he, he could be grabbing weapons powerful enough to take out the simians above. As it is, the crew has only the women’s pistols and whatever else Mike can rustle up from the galley in their defense. Sucky odds and likely getting suckier by the minute. Arden creeps up the stairs and waits behind the door leading to the forward lounge, keeping his ears open for the sound of trouble.
Nika addresses Zira carefully.
Nika: We could use a computer screen if you would like to talk.
Zira strokes her chin for a moment, clearly thinking it over. She sighs, shakes her head, and lopes aft down the central corridor toward engineering. Nika catches a glimpse of Mike standing in the galley doorway with a knife and gauging the size of the weapon to the size of the orangutan, and Nika shakes her head at him: no, I don’t think so. Mike nods and eases back. She looks at Rina and motions a finger at her toward Christian.
Nika: Locker.
Get the key and get to the arms locker and arm up.
Rina nods and slides along the wall toward Christian. Her gun is still up and trained on the scene in front of her. She jerks her head toward the stairway door and Christian refuses to move—going for the guns now might be interpreted as a hostile move by Maximus.
Nika stands and keeping an eye on Zira’s retreating back, asks Christian from across the room:
Nika: Tell me you at least locked the door to the aft lounge.
Christian: (shaking head) Engineering’s locked.
Nika: Thank you.
That’s a mercy. At least we don’t have to worry about the apes monkey-wrenching the works. Nika takes off down the corridor after Zira and Rina takes up a position further into the lounge, watching Nika’s back and yet still able to shoot Maximus if necessary. Christian eases off the bridge, locks the door behind him and cautiously approaches Maximus…and going into Negotiator mode, Christian addresses the gorilla from a safe distance.
Christian: So…which one of you is the leader?
Maximus rises and stretches his huge arms toward the ceiling, touching it, grunting.
Christian: Yes, you’re very large, very intimidating and can tear me apart in five seconds. We already know that.
Maximus calmly and deliberately pees on the floor, and levels a nasty look at Christian.
Christian: So you let the orangutan do all the thinking, then?
In the lounge, Rina’s keeping an eye on everything like a tennis match spectator and at this exchange, she whips her head around and hisses at the ex-Companion.
Rina: Christian.
Don’t antagonize the eight-hundred pound gorilla, willya please?
Christian: I’m just curious. What’s the dynamics of the group relationship? I’m trying to understand.
Maximus gives Christian a dubious look and then moves forward. A huge hand descends on Christian’s shoulder and pushes the man inexorably to the deck. Maximus straddles Christian and holds him pinned for a minute and Christian, no dummy, recognizes the dominance posture for what it is and acquiesces.
On the other side of the door to the stairs, Arden hears the clack of the deck plates at the gorilla’s passing and when nothing else sounds for a few seconds, Arden eases the door back to take a peek outside. Maximus catches the movement in the corner of his eye and with a loud snort! he whaps his palm against the door, violently slamming the door open on its hinges. The door catches Arden and the doctor goes flying. He hits the deck, hard, and goes out for the count.
Christian rises slowly and cautiously and keeps his hands in view. Maximus growls and approaches a few steps.
Christian: I’m not armed and I obviously can’t win in a fight, so…
Maximus approaches more aggressively.
Rina: (warning) Christiannnn.
C’mon. Don’t anger the big bad monkey. Still, you have to give the man credit. He didn’t flinch when the ape postured over him and he’s still moving and talking, despite the attitude coming off the gorilla. Christian takes a step back and Maximus closes by taking a step forward. Yep. The big guy’s following Christian now. Rina suppresses grimace—what is the man trying to do? Get them all killed?
Christian eases backward into the lounge, gropes for a chair and sits down. Rina releases a nervous breath and thanks him. Maximus follows Christian all the way to the chair and grabs the back of it, gives it a shake to assert his dominance. Christian weathers the ride without protest.
Maximus turns his attention to Rina and at his stare, Rina lowers her gaze. As with a junkyard dog, a direct stare is a clear challenge and she knows she hasn’t a prayer of winning one with the gorilla. She lowers her gun.
Christian: (calmly) Oh, no. Keep it pointed at him.
Rina: (extremely twitched) But he’s looking at me.
Christian: I realize that.
Rina: God…
Rina’s clinging to the edge with teeth and toenails, but damned if she’s going out like this. She keeps her gun trained on Maximus and the ape in the corner of her vision. And for the moment, nobody and nothing moves.
Mexican stand-off.
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