Jack L. Chalker Three Kings 3 Kaspars Box

Archiwum

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even more likely, seeking a bathroom. Not them. They looked well enough along,
but acted almost as if their condition had little or no effect on their
energy, aches and pains, or general mobility. How anyone could seem that
energetic carrying a watermelon between their legs was beyond him; it wasn't
at all natural.
It was further proof that, in spite of their primitive and humble native
world, these ones had been designed by someone specifically for this purpose.
No wonder they'd all gotten knocked up so young and so easily;
their entire design was towards pregnancy as a natural condition. These were
baby-making machines, designed not to simply continue evolution but to control
it.
Walking slowly but effortlessly down the path, the trio entered ape country
long before their titular guardian got there.
It was almost as if they were expected. As they came around a corner through
the dense jungle on the artificial track carved out for visitors, they
suddenly found themselves quite close to a whole colony of large hairy apelike
creatures sitting on a pile of rocks above and around a small pool of water.
The apes seemed nonthreatening and quite pleased for the company. It didn't
take more than a minute for anyone to get the impression that, from their
point of view, they were sitting there waiting for the attractions to come and
parade by the waiting colony. To the apes, the people were the animals.
"Jeez! They're like little hairy people!" Mary Margaret exclaimed.
"Some of 'em ain't so little," Irish responded, gesturing to an area behind
and to the right of the ape colony.
Up in the trees some really huge apes with bright orange fur and really
dumb-looking expressions watched the whole world go by. They seemed very slow
and almost to flow rather than merely move between positions, when they moved
at all, but there was no question that they were aware of everyone and
everything around them.
"Look! That one's preggers!" said the blond Brigit Moran, pointing to one of
the nearer apes in the group.
"Yeah! Wow! I think a couple of 'em are," Irish said, looking at each in turn.
"I wonder if they talk?"
"That's dumb!" Mary Margaret shot back. "They're, like, animals. Animals don't
talk!"
"I had a hog once could grunt 'Danny Boy'," Irish insisted. "They ain't all so
dumb."
"Yeah, well, maybe. I mean, we're the ones had to pay to see them, right? And
then we got to walk all this way to parade past them. Maybe you're right at
that," Mary Margaret said thoughtfully.
Murphy by this time had caught up, although he was a bit winded and his calves
were already threatening revolution. He spotted a comfortable-looking bench
under the jungle canopy and made for it, sinking down
onto the seat and feeling blessed relief. This was where they were instructed
to be, and by his watch they were within a couple of minutes of being on time,
so he was satisfied at that.
"Can we go over and pet them or somethin'?" Mary Margaret wondered.
Irish shook her head. "Don't think so. I bet there's some kinda wall we can't
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see around. Remember, just
'cause they kinda look like us don't mean that they wouldn't like to beat the
livin' shit out of us. We all know more human animals that'd do that, don't
we?"
The other two nodded seriously and made no attempt to get closer to the pool
and its colony of large chimpanzees.
Murphy looked at the apes, both the chimps on the ground and the orangutans in
the trees, and wondered if they weren't a lot smarter than they were supposed
to be.
You're gettin' paranoid, Murphy, he chided himself. But who wouldn't be after
a week or two like he'd just had with those three?
Truth was, he wondered if they could possibly be as airheaded as they let on.
Could they really match wits against those apes over there? And which group
would win the intellectual battle?
He also wondered why anybody bothered to keep great apes around and preserved
in their natural habitats like this. What good were they? Kind of like keeping
a prehistoric virus around because it was the ancestor of pneumonia. Just
because people and apes shared a family tree didn't seem to him sufficient
reason for some folks, some civilizations, to actually pay not only for their
preservation but also for real live pairs or colonies of them for some distant
colonial worlds who would find better use for those resources making sure that
they came through the upcoming economic and social train wreck everybody knew
had to be coming.
He thought he heard someone come up in back of him. Turning while not getting
up, he found himself staring down an enormous black-pelted gorilla not three
meters from the back of his head.
That made him move faster than he dreamed he was still capable of moving.
The gorilla didn't try and lunge, and seemed almost amused by his reaction,
like it had deliberately crept up behind him just to spook him and see what he
would do.
"So, you big muscle-bound beast," Murphy called to him, "think you could catch
Murphy in a panic, eh?
Well, here I am!"
The gorilla, on all fours but seeming more massive for all that, looked up at
him, seemed almost to smile, snorted loudly in the captain's direction, then
turned and vanished back into the forest.
"Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!" Murphy swore aloud. "Why the hell would anyone want
to make sure a brute like that survived and prospered is beyond me!"
He turned to see how the girls were taking his sneak attack and suddenly
realized that he was alone in the glen. Alone as far as humans went, anyway.
The chimps and orangs were still watching and they seemed highly amused.
"Girls! Where are you?" he shouted out as loud as he could, causing the chimps
at least to start jumping up and down and screeching at him in obvious mockery
of his genuine concern.
He walked slowly towards them, almost ready to grab one and make it tell him
where the girls were hiding, but just beyond the edge of the track he felt the
solidity and crackle of an energy barrier.
He tested it out, and it seemed to go the length of the track as far as he
could see in either direction. Okay, so they didn't go that way, at least not
unless they were using that infernal power stuff again.
He walked back to the bench, then around it, and immediately hit the same sort
of barrier on the bench side as well.
Thinking that they might have gone towards the exit, he walked back up the
track for a hundred meters or so, all exhaustion forgotten, until he could
actually see almost to the north gate. People, yes, in increasing numbers, but
no sign of the girls.
He quickly whirled and walked back down past the chimps and around the curve
where, he found, he had almost as good practical visibility to the next area.
A young couple seemed to be walking slowly and close together, hand in hand,
enjoying the day, and there was a maintenance robot moving towards him to his
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right, apparently collecting trash and checking the status of the energy
barrier as well.
He doubted that the girls were trying that invisibility or not notice trick;
that seemed to require a long period of time chanting together to get
themselves in synch. And while they did have some level of hypnotic abilities,
they weren't all that clever and no good at all at preplanning, so he doubted
if they were biding their time and then controlling his mind so that he
wouldn't notice them going. Not that they'd have
to. He'd been having enough concerns with that gorilla.
He went back over to the bench and sank back down onto it. Most likely simple
diversion. They might have put the gorilla up to it somehow, but he doubted
it. Easier to just wait until his attention was fully somewhere else and then
move. If it hadn't been the gorilla, it would have been something or,
eventually, somebody.
After a half hour he was convinced that it wasn't any trick of the girls that
had caused it, either. They would have come back and lorded it over him by
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