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guns and fire and electric cattle prods. No hordes of hungry savages had ever attacked, not even a pack of marauding rebel apes. The gorillas were ready for a fight, but there was nothing to fight. The nine years would probably stretch into ninety. Or nine hundred.
    The result was boredom. The gorillas had long since forgotten their original vigilance. They sat around the fires of their outpost, grumbling and picking at their fur, looking for fleas. They snorted and grumbled and cursed, pretending that they hated being out there in the cold night. But not one of them wanted to go back to Ape City, where the skinny little chimpanzees and the pale and effete orangutans were in charge. Out here, at least, gorillas could be gorillas. Out here they didn’t have to bathe every week, as Caesar commanded the other apes. Out here they didn’t have to practice their reading and writing. Out here they could play at war.
    But they weren’t even good at that.
    As Caesar, MacDonald, and Virgil crept over the ridge near the outpost, only one gorilla came alert. He sniffed at the air curiously and grunted. He poked one of his fellow guards. The other gorillas ignored him. They didn’t smell anything. Their senses had become blurred by disuse. Their vigil had been dulled by ennui.
    Caesar, MacDonald, and Virgil passed undetected.
    The sun rose to see them trudging across a region of sparse vegetation. The sky ahead went from black to deep blue, became bluer and bluer, then began getting pale, shading almost to white, then yellow and pink. Finally, a great ball of light showed its rim over the horizon and began climbing higher and higher to reveal itself as a blazing yellow orb. The sky around it was white with glare.
    Their shadows stretched out behind them, then began shrinking as the sun climbed overhead. The morning began warming, and MacDonald shrugged out of his jacket. Later he loosened his shirt. The two apes too began to feel the heat but couldn’t do anything about it.
    The ground was covered with dry scrub grass and occasional cactus. There were large boulders sticking up out of the sand. Once they saw a snake slithering out to sun itself on one of them. Another time they saw a rabbit, but by the time MacDonald got his Smith & Wesson out and loaded, it had disappeared.
    They stopped to rest at a water hole and chew on some of the dried fruits and nuts they had brought with them; Caesar sniffed at the water and wrinkled his nose in distaste. They used the water in their canteens instead. They waited out the hottest part of the day and then moved on.
    Evening saw them still struggling over the desert, the sun sinking behind them like a great red eye. The floor of the desert was sandy, and it was hard going, but they pushed on until it was too dark to see any more. Then and only then would Caesar let them stop for the night.
    The stars were sharp, brilliant needlepoints of clarity, high and distant. The roof of the world was vast, filled with them. In the cold, dark night, surrounded by silence and stars, whipped by a cold breeze, MacDonald felt a chill in his bones. A chill and something more. He looked over at Caesar and Virgil. They were silent and stolid. He wondered if the two apes felt the same way when they looked at the incredible night sky. They were impassive.
    What kind of emotions did apes have, anyway? They were more basic than humans—that was for sure. They were closer to nature. But, dammit, sometimes they seemed more rational than humans, more removed from life. And often they were impossible to decipher with their almost but not quite human expressions.
    MacDonald fell asleep thinking about it. He dozed lightly. He kept waking up and falling asleep again. He tossed and turned and rolled around in his blanket, He slept fitfully on the hard cold ground, and his mind was troubled with images he couldn’t identify, things that weren’t distinct enough to be called dreams.
    When he awoke, the two apes were already