Peter Dickinson - Eva

“That raises a very interesting point,” said Dad. “Of course you’re right in the sense that such a baby would inherit no human genetic material; but like humans, chimps are not solely the product of their inheritance. They are also creatures of their own cultures, though to a lesser extent than humans. The literature about wild chimps shows that different groups had their different ways of doing things, using simple tools and so on, which the young learned from their elders. Our own chimps would be lost if they had to return to a real jungle, because no one has taught them how to survive under such conditions, but on the other hand they have learned new skills and social arrangements to cope with conditions in the Pool. The social conditions are especially important because the restricted space has imposed a greater need for control of antisocial behavior, and the successful males in particular are those with greater social skills and awareness. It is extremely hard to quantify, but I am beginning to believe that especially in the Reserve, where the natural-selective process has the most chance to operate, something very like an increase in intelligence is becoming perceptible ...”

“But what about my babies?” said Eva.

“I was coming to that. The young of all higher animals are learning-machines. Evolution has programmed them to learn. The bigger brains they have, the more knowledge they can file and store. In all experiments with chimp learning the teachers have been humans, apart from a few anecdotal instances where a human-taught chimp has passed on some detail to another chimp. Moreover, the material taught has been strongly human biased—language is the obvious example. But imagine a chimp mother with human intelligence living in the wild. What would she teach her babies? Survival skills that they do not already possess—how to make fire, perhaps . . .”

“Knots?”

“Knots is an excellent example. Knots require dexterity and intelligence, both at about the limit of natural chimp capacity. The brighter ones could tie knots, the less bright couldn’t. Now suppose the ability to tie knots conferred an advantage in evolutionary terms, and suppose the knowledge of how to do it was passed on through a number of generations, then you would find that you had been breeding for dexterity and intelligence. You would have bred something into the chimp gene. A gift from humankind.”

Dad was really excited now, not just acting. His eyes sparkled, and his beard wagged. If he’d had a mane of white hair, he’d have been tossing it around. You couldn’t help liking him in this mood, though Mom, Eva was aware, had switched right off and withdrawn into herself as though all she could bear to think about was the process of cutting her food up on her plate and then chewing and swallowing it, with no enjoyment at all. Now, still chewing, she got up and began to clear the main course away. Eva scurried to help her.

“Don’t bother,” said Mom. “Go on talking to Dad.”

She was much more upset than Eva had realized. It was going to be difficult to get Dad to switch tracks in this mood. Eva went back to the table, peeled a banana, and ate it slowly, enjoying every mouthful but waiting for a gap in the flow.

“Now, suppose you introduce into your group a mutation,” said Dad. “Not anything physical, just some quirk, some trait, something like a slightly greater ability to intuit the causes of things, the why as well as the how ...”

In the pause for breath Eva made her grunt and rattled out her question.

“Are they getting bananas at the Pool?”

“Bananas all around? Can’t afford it. Where was I?”

“Hey! What about all these extra funds I’m earning for the benefit of the Pool?”

“They’re for research and so on. I was saying . . .”

“Bananas are benefits if you’re a chimp.”

“Okay, when we’re really rolling. But to go back ...”

“You better take me up on Saturday. I’ll do an opinion poll, find out how they want you to spend their funds. Okay?”

You could use the box like that, pressing the keys while the other person was still talking. Somehow it forced even Dad to wait and see what you were going to say. He shrugged and gave up.

“I want to be with the others anyway,” said Eva.

“No,” said Mom.

She was standing in the doorway from the kitchen, looking as though someone had just died.

“No, darling,” she said again. “I won’t have it.”

Eva’s hand froze over the keys.

“Now, listen, darling,” said Dad. “What we think, Mom and I, is this . . .”

Eva didn’t listen—she just understood. Mom didn’t want her to go to the Pool. She couldn’t bear the idea of Eva living that kind of life. Not at all, not even for a few hours at a time. She’d argued with Dad about it. Dad disagreed—he’d known it was something that Eva was going to need, and besides, it might have been extremely useful with his work, because Eva would learn about chimp behavior almost like a spy. She’d find out things no one had known before. He probably still wanted that, but he wasn’t prepared to fight for it, so he’d let Mom have her way for the time being, hoping that in a year or two Mom wouldn’t mind so much; and in the meanwhile the whole business they’d just been talking about, giving her others like her, chimps with human minds . . . well, they were going to do it anyway, but it was a sort of compromise, Dad’s way of putting things, to keep everyone sort-of-happy . . .

Eva picked up her mug and slung it at the wall. It smashed. By then she was on the table, flailing the dishes onto the door with a sweep of her arm. Mom screamed. Dad yelled at Eva to stop it. She ignored him and sprang across the room to the window , grabbed at the slats of the blind and ripped it down. Mom was shouting “No! Eva! No!” Dad was at his desk with his back to the room. He turned. He had a stun gun in his hand, the sort they used at the Pool to knock out a chimp they couldn’t handle any other way. As he raised it Eva snatched up a cushion and flung it at the gun, spoiling his aim. Before he could steady his arm she was on him. He tried to hang on, but she was far too strong. She wrenched the gun from his fingers and backed off. Mom was crying. Eva faced Dad, panting.

Her whole body was still electric with the impulse to rush around the apartment, breaking and destroying. She had watched the eruption almost as if from the outside, powerless to stop it, only able to direct it a little, using her human intelligence to recognize the gun, throw the cushion, snatch the weapon away. Now, with a big effort, she forced herself to stand still and tap out a sentence. Deliberately she didn’t press any of the tone codes.

“If you won’t let me be a chimp there, then I’ll be a chimp here,” said the lifeless voice. Dad watched her, fright and fury in the set of his mouth, calculation in his eyes. He’d kept the gun ready and loaded, Eva thought. He’d known, really. She pointed it downward and pressed the trigger. Phut, thud. The fine-needled dart quivered in the carpet. Mom stared at it, gulping to control her sobs. Eva pressed the keys again, but this time she coded in the human warmth.

“I’m sorry. It’s there. It’s part of me now. Please understand.”

Silence still.

“It doesn’t mean I’ll stop loving you.”

Dad turned and fiddled with the ruined blind, pretending he was trying to see whether it could be mended. Eva put the gun on the desk and went and stood in front of Mom in the half-crouched position now natural to her, with one set of knuckles on the ground. She looked up into Mom’s face. The blue eyes were blank, not stony and rejecting but empty, numb, lightless. Eva’s whole instinct was to reach up and touch and caress, but she knew that would be a mistake. Mom managed an unhappy smile.