Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes Read Online Free PDF Page B

the melee, Caesar saw Aldo’s hands close on his own collar chains, which the handlers had released in order to defend themselves. Terrified, the powerful gorilla began to flail the lethal chains like whips.
    A waiter caught one across the forehead, and shrieked as blood poured down over his eyebrows. The wrath of the pickets instantly shifted to the animal. Armando jerked Caesar’s leash, whispered: “Let’s get away. What’s the point of torturing yourself by watch—?”
    He didn’t finish, because Caesar startled him by taking two angry steps forward—and pulling the leash completely out of his hand.
    Armando’s brows flew upward in genuine alarm as he dashed to recapture his end of the leash. Caesar’s eyes were fixed almost hypnotically on the struggle; a struggle whose focal point had become the big, chain-flailing gorilla.
    Whistles shrilled. Pairs of state security policemen came running from other sections of the plaza. Two more popped from the main doors of the building housing the hiring agency.
    Six strong, the police kicked and elbowed through the press of waiters. They began beating Aldo with their truncheons, jabbing him with their prods. In a moment the gorilla was shielding his head with his arms. Caesar’s teeth ground together as the gorilla fell, bludgeoned to the pavement.
    Another man ran out of the building, a young, trim black in a conservative but expensive-looking suit. He pushed waiters and policemen aside with equal unconcern.
    “Stop it!” he shouted.
    A policeman’s raised truncheon was torn from his fingers by the man, who finally made himself heard.
    “All of you stop it—right now!”
    The policeman whose truncheon had been seized checked a punch he’d been aiming at the black’s vested stomach. He recognized the man. “Mr. MacDonald!”
    At the sound of the name, the other policemen ceased beating Aldo, who was now slumped on the ground, whimpering.
    The policeman started an explanation. “Sir, we were just trying to—”
    “I saw what you were doing,” snapped MacDonald, his brown eyes furious. “The people in the hiring agency rang upstairs and said there was trouble. It’s bad enough, trying to cave in that gorilla’s head, without adding the stupidity of doing it right under Breck’s terrace.” His glance of recrimination included the two handlers.
    “Aldo’s assigned to the messenger staff,” one of the handlers panted. “We were sent to bring him in when he didn’t show up at the Sanitation Bureau with a delivery. We found him wandering in Plaza North. He’s been balky lately—”
    “I wonder whose fault that is,” MacDonald said. “Sedate him and get him out of here, fast. Sometimes you people make me wonder which are the animals and which are the human beings.” And, pivoting, he stalked back to the building.
    Disgusted, one policeman asked another, “Who the hell was that?”
    “Take it easy. MacDonald’s the governor’s number one assistant.”
    “What’s the matter, he loves apes?”
    Seeing that the young black had vanished inside, the policeman allowed himself a smirk. “Doesn’t it figure?”
    Caesar barely heard; his gaze was fixed on the shimmering smoked glass doors through which MacDonald had disappeared. In all the agony of the long day, the governor’s assistant had displayed the first and only sign of genuine compassion that Caesar had seen. But the crowd around the fallen gorilla—the waiters, and especially the policemen—didn’t share MacDonald’s outlook. Even the handlers looked irritated, one of them producing a hypodermic needle from his pocket. The handler bent down, brutally jabbed the needle into Aldo’s side.
    Abruptly the gorilla came to life, sitting up with a shriek and flailing his chains. He whipped them right and left as the policemen jumped back, on the defensive. The waiters shouted encouragement. “Beat his hairy brains out!” “Show ’im who the hell’s boss!”
    The helmeted officers needed no