Monkey Wars (33 page)

“H
ow?” Papina demanded. “A few refugees against a whole army? You've spent too much time in that engine shed.”

Gu-Nah smiled; he liked this outspoken monkey. If they had all been like her maybe the rhesus would never have been conquered in the first place.

“How?” he replied. “Simple: by not fighting on his terms.”

Papina shook her head. “The only way we're going to survive is by not fighting at all. We have to hide, rebuild our numbers.”

“And that's it?!” Mico exclaimed. “That's your answer? Spend the rest of your days skulking in the slums?”

He'd thought Papina would leap at the chance to fight back, but she shook her head stubbornly.

“My monkeys have seen enough suffering to last a lifetime. They need peace.”

Mico gestured at the ugly industrial sprawl. “You call
this
 peace?”

“For now.”

“A broken troop, frightened of its own shadow?”

“Typical langur!” Papina growled. “You don't think anyone's strong unless they're swinging a weapon.”

“Sometimes that's the only way—”

“And sometimes strength is just about surviving! We did that. And we're not going to throw it away.”

Gu-Nah hurriedly stepped between them.

“Papina,” he said with quiet authority, “I'm a fighting monkey; I don't think deeply. But I know one thing for sure: you won't be safe until Tyrell is dead.”

His words hung in the air, simple, forceful.

Papina looked out across the yard at the young rhesus monkeys who were finding new games to play with their salvaged spring. All she wanted was to do the right thing for them.

Seeing how torn she was, Mico crouched next to her, trying to rekindle their old intimacy. “What's the point of surviving if you live in fear?” he whispered.

Papina looked at him, searching his eyes for the young monkey she'd fallen in love with, the monkey she'd trusted with her life. “All you've given me is fancy words. How could it possibly work?”

Gu-Nah smiled. “By getting up early. Dawn tomorrow.”

“Even the infants?”

“Especially the infants.”

Trying to appear eager for their first lesson, the rhesus had lined up in neat rows as Gu-Nah and Mico approached. The monkeys were just doing what they thought soldiers did, but when Gu-Nah stood in front of them he shook his head. “That's exactly how we're
not
going to win this war.”

The rhesus exchanged nervous glances.

“Now gather round,” Gu-Nah said casually. “For the next few moons we're going to do nothing but play games. The way I see it, if you want to fight different you have to think different; and to think different you need to grow up all over again, which means learning to play all over again.”

But it was play with a difference….

Wrestling became an exercise in the inequality of power. Gu-Nah organized the monkeys into pairs, adult against adult, youngster against youngster, and made them wrestle each other for control of a square marked in the dirt.

At first everything was evenly matched and very few fights had a clear conclusion. Then Gu-Nah secretly told half the monkeys to change their tactics—in
stead of simply wrestling, they were to focus all their energy on attacking one part of their opponent's body.

The monkeys were puzzled, but they tried it anyway.

Twitcher was matched against a rhesus male called Cadby. That morning they had wrestled each other to exhaustion without either getting pushed out of the square. Now, though, Cadby decided to focus all his effort on Twitcher's left arm.

“Attack!” shouted Gu-Nah and, as the two monkeys threw themselves at each other, Cadby dived for Twitcher's arm and yanked it toward the ground. Twitcher tried to prize him off but it was no use; Cadby just focused more of his energy on the arm, leaping up and locking both his legs around it.

Twitcher paused, utterly confused about how to counter the attack. As he hesitated Cadby swung round, pulled Twitcher off balance and sent them both tumbling to the ground. Still Cadby didn't let go—he leaped to his feet and dragged Twitcher across the dirt by his arm. Trying to relieve the searing pain, Twitcher scrambled after Cadby and was promptly bundled out of the square.

The monkeys were astonished at the bizarre but brilliantly effective technique.

“You get the point,” said Gu-Nah, stepping into the square. “Two matched forces will just keep slugging it out. But
winning
is what fighting is about. Whatever forces you have, focus them where the enemy is least expecting it and you create confusion. You throw them off balance. You win.”

Gu-Nah looked along the line of monkeys. “Any youngsters want to try it?”

“Me!” exclaimed Joop, a particularly enthusiastic youngster.

“Good. Who else?” said Gu-Nah, looking at the other young monkeys.

“No, I want to try it on Cadby!”

The monkeys all laughed—Joop was half the size of Cadby and obviously didn't stand a chance.

Gu-Nah just gave a wry smile. “Even better.” And he ushered Joop into the square.

The monkeys murmured nervously.

Joop looked up at Cadby with a solemn face. “Don't go easy on me.”

Cadby smiled indulgently. “As if.”

“Attack!” barked Gu-Nah.

Cadby thrust forward to grab Joop by the shoulders—his plan was to lift the young monkey clean off his feet and toss him out of the square. That should get a laugh. But he'd forgotten that the whole point of the exercise was about upsetting plans.

Cadby lunged and Joop flung himself to the ground, avoiding his grasp. Then, as Cadby swung back round, Joop hurled himself toward the bigger monkey's left leg. The speed and force took Cadby completely by surprise; he didn't even have time to tense his muscles; his leg was just snatched away and he tumbled into the dirt.

The watching monkeys gasped in surprise; a few started to laugh. Anger pricked Cadby—he'd show this little upstart who was the better fighter.

But immediately Joop struck again, grabbing the bigger monkey's ears and twisting his head, forcing Cadby's body to follow…and roll right out of the square.

The spectators burst into spontaneous ground-thumping, delighted at the triumph of the underdog.

With the battle over, Joop switched back from warrior to polite little monkey, helping Cadby to his feet and asking, “Are you all right?” as if the attack had been nothing to do with him.

Gu-Nah immediately set everyone to work practicing the technique. Young wrestled old, females wrestled males—there was no hierarchy.

There were more upsets in the days that followed, as each new game turned some preconception or other on its head.

For “command or control,” Gu-Nah split the group into adults against infants and gave them an objective: to build a bridge across the storm gully that ran behind the steelworks. This was no easy task—the concrete ditch was as wide as a small road, and full to the brim with swirling water.

Gu-Nah organized the adults along traditional troop lines. Twitcher was put in charge of the operation and had to direct operations from the water tower. Strict military discipline was to be maintained at all times.

The youngsters, on the other hand, were given no leader. Instead, Gu-Nah told them that they were each personally responsible for successfully bridging the gully. It was as if they had all been made leaders.

A well-organized hierarchy of adults against an anarchic band of infants all vying with one another? It should have been obvious who would win.

While the youngsters dispersed in random directions, all doing their own thing, Twitcher issued a long stream of carefully considered orders, sending out some monkeys to look for materials, ordering others to find a good crossing point.

As the sun reached its highest point, Twitcher was still looking at designs drawn in the sand, while the rival team had amassed a huge pile of materials at the side of the storm gully and was starting to experiment with various constructions.

Cadby reported back that the youngsters were in the lead, but Twitcher wasn't worried. “No point being the fastest if your bridge collapses,” he chuckled, convinced that good organization would win the day.

But by sunset the young monkeys put the final piece of their bridge in place and successfully crossed the gully. The race was over, and the adults hadn't even finished their foundations.

Twitcher was stunned. All the adult monkeys were. They stared, incredulous, at the euphoric infants dancing back and forth across their bridge. It was the weirdest bridge any of them had seen, a kind of pontoon, floating on old tires and secured to the bank at either end with bits of cable…but it worked, and that was what mattered.

“What just happened?” demanded Gu-Nah.

“We won! We won!”

“But
why
did you win?” insisted Gu-Nah.

The youngsters quieted down; they had no idea why.

“One word: freedom.” Gu-Nah let the word hang in the air for a moment. “The young monkeys were free to try anything they wanted; the adults could only follow orders.”

“So it's
my
fault,” said Twitcher fractiously. “For giving the wrong orders.”

“It's not the orders you gave; it's the fact that you had to give them at all,” Mico intervened diplomatic
ally. “You had to work with a hierarchy. It gave you control, but it lost you time. The youngsters just collected whatever looked interesting. A lot of it was junk—they didn't care; they collected it anyway. But when they started
playing
with their pile of junk, that's when their ideas started coming. Because they didn't need to worry about following orders, some of those ideas were crazy.”

Mico pointed to a rubber tire under the middle of the bridge. “They wouldn't have thought of using a floating support if they hadn't just happened to have collected a tire.”

“I saw a pile of tires as well, behind the small warehouse,” protested Cadby, trying to save face for the adults.