Eva

by Peter Dickinson

  The chimps came back for the next take in a jumpy mood, but as soon as Eva knuckled down to meet them they crowded around her, panting and touching. Even Bobo half forgot his dignity and tried to greet her as though she’d been boss. They needed the reassurance of her presence, the understanding that nothing unpredictable or ugly would happen to them while she was around. Very much to her surprise, Eva found that she actually enjoyed the sense of power and respect she got from them. She’d never been a leader in the old days, always more of a tagger-along and seer-what-happened. Now, though, she had to lead. Jenny was a natural tease, with a knack of spoiling any setup just as it was all ready to go. When she noticed this was about to happen Eva would prod Bobo and point, and Bobo would bush his fur out and snarl at Jenny, who would immediately cower and behave. Bobo himself as the day went on became more and more fretful, but the others understood the importance of keeping him happy. Belinda half-accidentally organized a sort of rotation so that Bobo always had a couple of females paying attention to him. By the end of the day Belinda was also trying to copy some of the grunts and gestures that she’d seen Eva using to control the threatening swarm of humans.

  The whole thing ended with the shoot-out. It was mostly done by tricks and cameras. Bobo had a gun taped to his hand, and of course he just waved it about and tried to shake it free and pull it off, but by piecing tiny pieces of that together they were going to make it look as if he’d drawn it from his holster. Eva’s gun was a trick banana. She drew it and pulled the trigger; the skin split open and the banana shot across the saloon, finishing in Bobo’s mouth (more tricks). It all ended with his sitting down and munching away, which he happened actually to do the first time, with exactly the right look of having decided he was tired of being a baddy and was now going to become a model citizen. Pure accident, of course, but all the humans laughed and cheered, as much with the relief of having gotten the assignment over as with real amusement. The studio echoed with their baying cackle. Coming from a Public Area with humans gawking at them all day long, Mr. Coulis’s chimps were used to the noise and paid no attention, but Eva felt her whole skin prickle with fright and rage. The urge to get away was overpowering. She saw a couple of studio assistants coming her way, their kids’ autograph books open and ready. Normally she’d have done what they wanted, but today she swung away and scampered across to where she’d left her keyboard by her chair. Grog was still standing there, staring at the scene with a look of real hatred.

  “Don’t forget,” she said. “Call Dad.”

  “Will do.”

  She grunted and knuckled away to her dressing room.

  MONTH EIGHT,

  DAYS FOUR AND SIX

  Living—just living.

  What for?

  The apes in the iron grove, waiting, purposeless . . .

  The people cramming the pavements, cramming the travelers, their faces all fret, purposeless . . .

  Eva, between . . .

  What for?

  Grog hit it off fabulously with Mom—with Dad, too, in a different way. He even managed it with both together. When he had Dad to himself he let Dad do all the talking, just asking the odd question to nudge the conversation on. At the same time, Eva noticed, he gave Dad little signals of deference while still managing to seem quite free and independent. With Mom he talked gossip, mostly. Tagging along with Mimi he’d met shaper stars, artists, billionaires, and they fell naturally into the talk. He had a story about them or knew what they were really like, and told her. If Dad had been listening he’d have felt a need to compete with famous people he’d met, and then get huffy because they weren’t as famous as Grog’s. And Grog listened. He remembered what Mom told him—the names and doings of people she tried to help in her job, and he laughed or sympathized with their stories, and so on. It seemed perfectly genuine. Eva decided he was just interested in people, in his rather detached way, because they were people, not because they were famous. She said so one day and he shook his head.

  “Sure, I’m interested,” he said. “What you mean is I’m not impressed—just like I’m not impressed by money. I’m interested though, because money’s useful. How’s old Beth doing?”

  Eva gave him the chimp gossip—he was interested in that too. Only later did she wonder whether he’d brought Beth up so as to stop her from asking what he was going to use his famous friends for—he didn’t need anything or seem to want anything. She began to watch him with different eyes, noticing, for instance, how when he had Mom and Dad together he would usually side with Mom in an argument, somehow without actually contradicting Dad, and how in these arguments, if they had anything to do with chimps or conservation, Grog seemed better informed each time he came. He must have been reading a lot and watching tapes, but he never said so.

  Cormac had a toothache. He was pretending he didn’t but Mom, typically, got him to admit it and then insisted on driving him off to find a dentist while Eva was in the Reserve, though the chances of getting emergency treatment in less than six hours were roughly nil. They weren’t back by the time Eva came out, so she hid on a wide shelf above some garbage cans that were housed in a shed by the parking lot. The bricks had gaps between them so that the air stayed fresh around the cans, which allowed Eva to watch the entrance for Mom’s car. Eva had never really believed that anyone would want to kidnap her, but Dad did, and Honeybear had put it into the contract that she had to have a bodyguard, so there was a good chance Cormac would have been fired if she’d been spotted hanging around alone.

  At first she just crouched there, enjoying her peace and privacy, easing herself into the transition between her two lives. Time went by and she began to feel anxious. She could feel her lips tensing and drawing back to show her teeth. Then she heard a familiar voice. “Saturday again, okay?” “Far as I know, Grog.” “Right, so long.” He strolled past only a few paces away. She was off the shelf and scampering after him before she had time to wonder why he was there. He turned at the sound of her feet and smiled.

  “Hi, Eva. Thought you’d gone home.”

  “Mom’s taken Cormac to the dentist. She’s late.”

  “Uh-huh. Had a good time?”

  He hadn’t seemed even faintly surprised or put out to see her, but now there was something in his tone, in the quickness of the question, trying to put the talk on to ground of his own choosing, which stopped her from answering normally. She grunted an okay and changed the subject.

  “Why are you here?”

  “Just interested.”

  “Does Dad know?”

  People had to get special permission, with good reasons, to come to the Reserve. The Public Section was for the gawkers.

  “Guess not. Didn’t want to bother him.”

  Her grunt this time was surprise and doubt, but at that moment Mom drove into the parking lot.

  “No time now,” he said. “Don’t worry—it’s all in a good cause. Tell you about it—uh, when’s the next commercial?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’ll drive you to the studios. Pick you up half past eight. Tell you on the way. Hi, Lil, good to see you.”

  “What on earth are you doing up here?”

  “Making a date with your daughter.”

  As usual, he managed it perfectly—teasing, a bit mysterious, making her understand she’d just get teased again if she went on, so that she’d better shut up.

  “Tuesday, then,” he said. “Eight-fifteen, sharp. Hi, Cormac. See you, Lil.”

  He strolled away.

  “What was that about?” said Mom.

  “Don’t know—only he’s taking me to the studio so he can explain why he’s been nosing around. How’s your tooth, Cormac?”

  Grog’s car was characteristic—small and old and smelly. Even more characteristic was the fact that he had a license for it, when he didn’t even have a job and didn’t do anything for anyone. He kept overriding the City Guidance System to drive manually along side routes that avoided the jams. He didn�
�t seem to want to talk, so Eva decided to ask him directly.

  “What were you doing up at the Reserve?”

  “Watching. Learning.”

  “Why?”

  “Tell you when we get there. There’ll be time.”

  As he spoke his head moved fractionally. To Cormac, crouching enormous on the backseat, it probably looked just like the result of a jolt, but Eva understood. They reached their destination with a good half hour to spare.

  Honeybear rented a studio from one of the big shaper companies, and the car they sent for Eva used to drive around to that wing, but Grog pulled up in front of the soaring transmission tower.

  “Slot one-two-oh-eight in the parking garage,” he said. “Take her around for me, will you, Cormac? See you in the studio. Thanks.”

  At the main entrance he showed a pass to the security guard, who said, “Hi, Grog, nice morning . . . hey, is this Eva?” Eva shook the guard’s hand and followed Grog through the huge hallway to the elevators. At the hundred-and-somethingth floor the elevator voice said, “Terminus. Terminus. Upper floors not yet open.” Grog slid a plastic card into a slot, and the elevator went on up.

  “Okay,” he said as it slowed. “I want to carry you this bit. Shut your eyes. Don’t open them till I say so, or you’ll spoil the fun. Huh! You’re heavier than I guessed!”

  Mystified, Eva closed her eyes and clung. She heard the doors open and smelled food-smells. Grog’s footsteps made no noise on a thick carpet. He stopped and she heard the faint flip of switches, then the hum of a shaper-zone warming—more than one, and huge, making her fur creep with static. The hum died as the zones settled into their shapes.

  “Okay, you can look now,” said Grog.

  She opened her eyes and saw jungle—dark, rich greenness, swaying faintly. Now the noises began, rustles, birdcalls, a weird distant howling, the splash of water. But no smells, only yesterday’s food. An enormous orange spider scuttled across the brown dead leaves toward Grog’s feet, and vanished. It wasn’t real. It had just reached the edge of the zone. She turned her head and over Grog’s shoulder saw a table and chairs, and a little way off another one in another gap in the zones; then another and another; and then, farther off still, daylight, the brilliant sky over the city, seen through big windows high up in the building.

  “Uh?” she grunted.

  “Executive restaurant,” said Grog. “Center of the world, kind of. The fat bastards who decide what we’re all going to see and think sit in their offices and look at the instant-feedback figures and then they come up here and fight out over their steaks what we’re going to see and think next. They can’t do a vital job like that without something pretty to look at in the background, can they? Want something else?”

  He pressed a key on the control box he was carrying and they were on a paved square in Venice, under striped umbrellas, with palaces and gondolas around; a moment later they were under palms on an island, with blue-green waves breaking into surf. He brought the jungle back.

  “It’s not even tape,” he said. “It’s real. This very minute, out in Cayamoro, that snake’s looking for tree frogs.”

  The snake was pale green, with a dark stripe along its spine. Eva felt herself shudder at the sight of it. She almost jumped back into Grog’s arms. She hadn’t minded snakes when she’d been human—not on the shaper anyway. Now it was Kelly’s impulse, barely controllable, to leap away and chatter her fright. Teeth bared, she watched the snake slide out of sight. It took her a minute or two more to gather the courage to explore.

  Of course Eva had seen jungle on the shaper at home, but there the zone filled only a part of the living room, less than life-size. You could walk into it, but it was all so crowded that you couldn’t help walking through the shapes, and you felt huge, and you could see out all around to the same old walls and chairs and pictures. This was different. It was almost real, apart from the tables and chairs. Faint marks on the floor showed the narrow pathways between the zones where the guests and the waiters came and went, but on either side you seemed to peer deep into living jungle, succulent leaves, shaggy peeling bark with yellow berries. A hummingbird darted across a space, its wings a blur, emerald mist. Beneath the leaf litter something moved, emerged, jet-black, a millipede twenty centimeters long. Between two trunks stretched a strange white vague thing; small yellow spiders scuttled through it, hundreds of them; it was their communal web; when a moth blundered in they were on their victim in a flash. All around was a sense of danger. Could you eat the berries, the bugs, the leaves? Was the millipede deadly? Or the snake?

  But along with the danger was excitement, yearning. This was where you belonged. This was Kelly’s dream.

  Eventually she knuckled her way back and found Grog standing by one of the wide windows, staring south.

  “Uh?” she said.

  “Going to see the real thing,” he said. “I’m flying out to Cayamoro, day after tomorrow.”

  “Uh?”

  “Just have a look around. Size things up. People too.”

  You couldn’t just go to Cayamoro like that. But Grog could. He held up a finger.

  “Hear that?” he said.

  The far faint wail had begun again.

  “Howler monkey,” he said. “Jungle should be full of that noise, but they got their figures wrong when they set it all up. The howler population’s gone down and down. They’re not going to survive. So there’s room for a new big ape in Cayamoro.”

  Eva understood at once what he was talking about. She was surprised. Surely he’d learned enough by now.

  “We wouldn’t survive either,” she said. “It’s been tried.”

  “No, it hasn’t. Not what I’ve in mind.”

  “Have you told Dad? First time we met, I said ask him.”

  “Said as much as I could, short of getting slung out of the door. Not a good listener, your dad. You’ve got to remember he’s got a whole lot of his life tied up in the Pool. One thing I’ve learned is we’re going to have a tougher time educating humans than we are educating chimps.”

  “It’s been tried.”

  “Sure—I’ve read the literature, Stella Brewer, for instance, great girl, trying to teach chimps how to live in the wild after they’d been used for learning experiments, lived in houses, worn clothes, eaten off plates.”

  “I thought some of hers were wild.”

  “Yeah. Brought in as babies by poachers, and some of them she won with, too—just a few. None of that matters. All I know is we’ve got to try again. We can’t go on as we are. You’ve been born with the Pool, Eva, grown up with it. It’s an always-there thing for you. But it isn’t. The way things are going, in twenty years’ time the Pool will be finished.”

  “Uh!”

  “I’ve seen the figures. To you, being short of funds is just another always-there thing, but it’s been getting worse. There’s a trend. It started long before you were born. I’m not just talking about the Pool and I’m not just talking about money. It’s happening all over. The whole human race is thinking in shorter and shorter terms. The bright kids aren’t going into research; the investors aren’t putting their money into anything that doesn’t give them a quick return; governments and institutions aren’t funding basic research; we’re pulling back from space exploration—you name it, we’re doing it. We’re giving up. Packing it in.”

  “Uh?”

  “Trouble with us humans is we keep forgetting we’re animals. You know what happens when an animal population expands beyond what the setup will bear? Nature finds ways of cutting them back. Usually it’s plain starvation, but even when there’s food to go around something gets triggered inside them. They stop breeding or they eat their own babies or peck one another to death—there’s all sorts of ways. Us too. It’s in us. We can’t escape it. A lot of it’s been going on already for years without anyone noticing, a sort of retreat, a backing out, nine-tenths of the world’s population holed up in their apartments twenty-four hours a day watching the sh
aper. But it’s starting to move. I can feel it. There’s a real crash coming, and us being humans, whatever it is, we’re going to overdo it. You know what that means for you chimps? Lana’s children, or her children’s children, are going to have to fend for themselves. You think they’ll make it out there?”

  He flicked his head toward the endless vista of high rises, veiled in their human haze.

  “Not a hope,” he said. “They’ve got to be somewhere where there’s trees to shelter them, leaves that come and come, fruit all year round, small game—the life they were made for.”

  “They’ve forgotten.”

  “They’ll have to learn all over . . . No, listen . . .”

  He had gripped her hand as she stretched it over the keyboard.

  “. . . there’s chances now. There’s something new, something Brewer and the others didn’t have. When they tried to teach chimps how to live wild, they had one big problem—they were human. They couldn’t lead, they could only push—push the chimps out into a world where humans didn’t fit. It makes your heart bleed, how they tried, the things they gave up. But you could lead, Eva.”

  “Uh!”

  “You and the others. Stefan’s due to wake up, any day now.”

  “Uh?”

  “Chimp used to be called Caesar. Yasha’s a month behind. Then there’ll be three of you.”

  Eva had not asked about Caesar since the night of her tantrum, and Mom and Dad hadn’t mentioned him either, though Mom was probably hoping that when Joan’s other patients began to awaken, to become available for company, then Eva would stop wanting to spend so much time at the Reserve. Eva wasn’t sure what she felt about this. Some ways it would be good to know chimps who could also talk—bitch about friends, discuss music, tease, plan lives—but she had now discovered other kinds of talk, in glance and gesture and especially touch, that gave her everything she needed.