Author's Clarification: This crossover story is set in the movie Lord of the Rings universe rather than in the book universe. It is also set in the Planet of the Apes TV universe, not the movies.
HIDDEN PATHS
Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate,
And though we pass them by today,
Tomorrow we may come this way
And take the hidden paths that run
Towards the Moon or to the Sun.
J.R.R. Tolkien
"Is it a computer?" Eyes wide with wonder, Galen tilted his head to stare at the wall of blinking lights that rose before him. "It's different from the one we saw before." The ape's mouth hung open as he regarded the unexpected sight.
When the two astronauts and the chimpanzee had entered the concealed room, the lights on the huge wall panel had activated automatically, humming with power, and revealed a vast chamber, dusty with age, yet still alive, still functioning. The entire wall had been given over to technology. It didn't look familiar to Pete Burke, either, but a lot more futuristic than even he, as an astronaut, was accustomed to, as if it had been taken from a science fiction movie. Except that it was brighter, the chamber vaguely reminded him of the room in the Death Star where the controls had been set to destroy the planet Alderaan in Star Wars. Instead of a black background, the walls were composed of a clear, translucent substance from which its multitude of lights glowed and flickered in reds and greens and chased elusive patterns up and down the walls. In the center of the wall stood a transparent door that opened into a small chamber about twice the size of a phone booth. He could see the three of them reflected, ghost-like, in the chamber door: himself skinny with a tousled mop of dark hair that hadn't been cut in far too long, Alan, fair and more solidly built, and Galen, a chimpanzee as tall as a man in spite of his hunched-forward gait, garbed in green in the style of his world. A panel beside door that reflected the fugitives had a dial set into it, with numbers on it. The numbers read: 00 00 0000, each set of zeroes had smaller dials beside it. Next to them was a lever. Nowhere on the panel's face could Pete see anything that remotely resembled a drive to insert a disk.
Virdon's hand went automatically to the pouch where he carried the small magnetic disk, the input record of the flight that had brought Alan and Pete into the future. Alan would hope to use it here, hoping it would allow them to reverse the process and find a way back to the Twentieth Century--if he could find a drive in which to insert it. His endless quest for computers and technology, for a way home, had never faltered in the year since the two astronauts' space mission had gone wrong and they had found themselves stranded more than more than two thousand years in their own future, in a society dominated by apes. No matter how often Pete had called the quest for a way home a pipe dream and counseled Alan against hope, Alan had never given up on the chance. Maybe it had been a forlorn hope. From the look of this place, deep in a Forbidden Zone that had made Galen very uneasy, it might regard Alan's disk as an unworkable antique.
"I think it must be a computer," Pete replied to Galen, when Alan stared wordlessly, his eyes as wide as the chimpanzee's. "It isn't like the ones we're used to or the one we saw in the ruins of Oakland, but I think this one had to come a lot of years, even centuries, after our time. We never saw anything this advanced before our flight, except in sci-fi movies."
Galen had heard them speak of movies before and didn't question that. "Will it enable you to return to your own time?" His sad and wistful voice made the two astronauts stare at him in sudden realization. For them to find a way home would present him with a conundrum. He would not feel he could go with them, for, once there, he would be a curiosity, a freak, the only sentient ape in the entire world. Did he fear Alan and Pete stayed with him simply to have a protector in the ape-dominated culture of 3085? He ought to know how strongly friendship bound them. How much of that would change when the circumstances did? Galen would be just as much a fish out of water in the 1980s as Alan and Pete were here. Would it matter to the folks back home that he was decent and honorable, willing to risk him his life for a friend? Or would the brass or one of the covert agencies with alphabet names, learning how apes ruled the future, take him into custody to study him in hopes of preventing that fate? Pete had a very bad feeling about Galen in the Twentieth Century. But to leave him here? Urko and his gorilla band had trailed them all the way to the Forbidden Zone. The gorilla general's solution to any problems involving humans was to shoot first and not even worry about asking questions later. They might arrive at any minute, rifles in hand.
Of course the trio could be jumping the gun. This computer might not offer them a way home, even if they could figure out how to access its programming. It might be one more mystery, one that had obviously been constructed years after they had been thrust forward in time. From the book they had seen with the picture of a New York some five hundred years into their future, they knew their society had continued that long before it fell. Who knew what scientific breakthroughs scientists had made in those long years? Even in the ten years before the astronauts' flight, technological advances had come so fast that even a year away from home might leave Pete and Alan out of date. Given several hundred years, the two of them might be dinosaurs.
"I don't know, Galen." Pete hoped he sounded reassuring, but doubted Galen would take it that way. "It's more high tech than anything we're used to. Maybe we can figure how to use it if we check it out, but maybe not."
"What do you think it could be?" the chimp asked. Even the thought of a way home for his two human friends that might leave him here alone could not squelch his abundant curiosity.
"It is the doorway into history."
The sudden voice made all three fugitives whirl and bunch protectively together, fearing the arrival of the pursuing Urko, whom they had eluded just beyond the borders of the Forbidden Zone. Instead, the speaker was human, a slender, aesthetic-looking man in kind of science-fiction-y robe that looked like it might have evolved from a toga--or a Star Trek episode. Not too different from the projection they had seen in the science building in ruined Oakland. Why did future guys always seem to emulate ancient Rome? It made Pete and Alan's rough homespun garb seem incredibly primitive. But was the toga-ed newcomer really human? How could he be? He was almost transparent.
Galen blurted out a surprised sound. "He is--I can see shapes through him like the figure we saw in Oakland, but he is more solid. Is it magic?" He edged uneasily closer to Alan and Pete, darting nervous glances at the mysterious figure. "Is it a spirit?"
Alan patted the ape's shoulder reassuringly. "No, Galen, he must be a hologram. The one we saw before was only a projected image, but this one--he's three-dimensional," he explained, his eyes nearly as wide as Galen's. "I never saw one before, at least nothing this real looking, but that's what he has to be."
"Never before has an ape dared enter the Annuate Chamber," the transparent man said. He studied the two humans. "I know much of the world as it has become. Has he enslaved you?"
"Enslaved us?" Pete echoed. "Are you kidding? Galen's our friend. We'd never have made it without him. We don't play the master/slave game. He knows humans aren't inferior to apes."
"You are out of time," the hologram said, looking right at Pete. He would have taken it as an ominous statement of intent, but there was no trace of threat in his words. "Misplaced in time," he clarified. "Are you not?"
Alan exchanged a doubtful glance with Pete, who shrugged. They didn't know how to work the strange equipment, and to start pushing buttons when there were so many to push might not cut it. If this guy had answers, they might as well play along. The blond astronaut read the purpose in Pete's face. "We are. We're stranded in our future, trying to get home. I don't know what you are, but is there anything you can do to help?"
"I am the simulacrum of the final Guardian of Time," the hologram replied. "When he knew he was the last, that the humans beyond the walls of our enclave grew progressively primitive, that the world as we knew it had fallen, and apes had begun a rise to power, he created me and programmed me with his knowledge, his memories, his values, to be activated at his death. I maintain the Annuate, the Hall of Years. I can help you indeed, for the chamber is designed to set itself should any who are out of time enter it, just as it programs the traveler with what languages might be needed for a sojourn in the past. None have come since my awakening, but now you are here. My long solitude has served its purpose."
"You can send them home?" Galen asked, and his voice faltered. His shoulders hunched and he seemed smaller as if his clothes had suddenly grown too big for him.
"I can easily return them to their own time. When they step into the booth, the machine will read them and set itself, and I can then adjust the geographic location to their specifications. I am programmed with knowledge of the world in all past times, even those before history as you know it was recorded, for the Annuate has long served as a teaching tool. You think history goes back to the Pharaohs and a bit beyond, young out-of-timers? Oh, no, far beyond that. Far, far beyond." He saw Galen's eyes widen, and said, "That interests you, young chimpanzee?"
"It frightens me," Galen confessed frankly. "All that history. Human history. I would like to learn of it, but it is still frightening."
"Apes are recent, for I study the world today as well. People once believed humans evolved from apes, but it is a parallel evolution. Apes merely took longer, hard as that is for you to believe, who was conditioned to believe apes have always dominated the world." He turned back to Alan and Pete. "Will you step into the chamber? Toward the end, most who lingered here, learning their world was failing, chose to venture forth, to live in history, going into periods of which they had the greatest knowledge where they would live carefully in hopes of altering nothing."
"Our going home won't hurt the timeline," Alan insisted. "We belong there, not here. I've got a wife and son waiting for me back in 1980. I thought I'd never see them again." He faced Galen and put his hands on the ape's shoulders. "Galen, I have to go. You know that. I have to go back to my wife and son."
"I do, Alan. I know you do. I've always known you would go if the chance came." Yet he looked so lost and demoralized, his eyes frightened, his shoulders slumping beneath Alan's grip. His future must seem empty and without hope.
Pete shook his head, stirred with pity for his friend even now that the hope of home blazed before him. How could they leave Galen alone here when Urko lurked just beyond the border of the Zone, waiting for a chance at the fugitives? What would happen to Galen if he were captured with no one to stand for him? "Come with us, Galen," Pete urged. "There's nothing left for you here. You're a fugitive. I don't know what Urko would do to you if he caught you, but it wouldn't be good."
Galen backed up a step. "I can't go. In your time I would be a freak. I wouldn't belong. I have friends here, relatives. Some of them begin to understand, like Kira and even Leander. I can hide, and there are those who would shelter me. I can find them. You have to go. It isn't safe for you here. Urko would kill you if he caught you. You know that. He's tried before."
Pete's stomach knotted. "Oh, man, Galen. I hate this. I never thought...." He suddenly lunged at the chimpanzee and hugged him. "I won't miss this world, even if there are good people in it, both ape and human. But I'll miss you."
Galen hugged him back. "Take care, Pete, Alan."
It seemed so wrong to just take off and leave Galen to his own devices. He exchanged a doubtful glance with Alan. His friend's certainty shone on his face. He had always remained resolved in his course to find a way home. Lately Pete had taken each day as it came, drifting through life, dealing with each crisis, but now the thought of home pulled him so hard he ached with it. Yet Galen had become a brother. How could they leave him like this, with Urko waiting to pounce?
As if he sensed Pete's disquiet, the Guardian looked at Galen. "I will shelter you here, if you would wish it. There are ways to monitor the world beyond. If there is danger, we can find it and guide your path away from it." Pete let out a relieved breath.
"See, Galen, you'll be safe." Alan pressed Galen's hand, then he drew a deep, urgent breath and stepped into the chamber the Guardian had opened. As Pete watched, the dials that had read at 00 00 0000 began to move. He watched them in awe as they automatically set. The last four digits read 1981. Was that because they had been here long enough for a year to pass back home? It dawned on Pete that they would have a lot of explaining to do when they suddenly materialized. What would they find when they got back? Would the world consider their disappearance and return a hoax, a publicity stunt? Would they face countless trouble of their own? From the look on Alan's face, he was prepared to weather any such storm as long as it took him back to Sally and Chris.
"Which part of the world would you go to?" the Guardian asked. His hand hovered over another control. "It is presently set for the area that was once called England, for the last to use this had a fascination for the War of the Roses."