Peter Dickinson - Eva

Eva pressed the keys again, coding in pleasure and excitement.

“I made a friend,” she said.

“That’s nice,” said Mom automatically, but stopped her next sentence before she’d begun it. Why don’t you ask her over? it would have been, but that didn’t make sense now.

MONTH SIX,

DAY ELEVEN

Living two lives . . .

Yesterday the Reserve, the silent iron trees, the sunlight . . .

Friendly fingers creeping across a shoulder blade . . .

Peace . . .

Today clamor, scurry, pressure . . .

Today people . . .

Bobo snatched off jenny’s glasses and bit them in two. One of Mr. Coulis’s helpers tried to grab him, but he flung her away, snarling. Mr. Coulis himself came hurrying but stopped when Bobo lurched at him with his hair bushed out under his cowboy shirt—a male chimp’s bite is a serious wound. Realizing his advantage but already scared of what he’d done, Bobo looked for an escape. Up, his instincts told him. He leaped for a nearby lighting tower. The technician at the top felt the tower shake and shouted, then looked over and saw Bobo swarming up. He scuttered down the ladder on the far side. Bobo reached the platform and turned, barking his anger. When he shook the guardrail the whole tower rattled and quivered and two loose lights fell off, their bulbs exploding when they hit the ground. The noise excited him further. Everyone was yelling now. Mr. Coulis had started to climb the ladder, but Bobo saw him coming and slung a screwdriver at him, hitting him on the cheek. He scrambled down with blood beginning to stream onto his shirt. Bobo tried to wrench a fixed light off the rail.

Mimi began to screech. She was a shaper director, quite well known for her pictures and even better known for her extravagance and tantrums. She was a short, square, yellow-faced woman who always wore red-and-black outfits with chunky necklaces and bangles. In a tantrum she threw her arms about so that the bangles clashed out of key with her screeches. Mr. Coulis tried to placate her with little bobs and shrugs while he dabbed at his cheek with a bloody handkerchief. It wasn’t his fault. The script had called for a big chimp, and that meant a male. Bobo hadn’t done commercials before, but he’d always been fairly easygoing and less unpredictable than the other males. And so on. Mimi paid no attention.

The four trained chimps—Jenny, Belinda, Olo, Nin—watched both exhibitions with wariness. They probably found the human quarrel more frightening. To see a male chimp in a rage was an everyday thing for them, but to see humans making the same kind of noises, giving the same kind of signals, especially to Mr. Coulis, whom they’d been trained to regard as dominant—that was new and alarming. Humans had immense and magical powers. What mightn’t one of them do in a tantrum?

Eva also watched, but with increasing exasperation. She hated these sessions anyway, but it was in the contract so she had to do them. In a minute or two Mr. Coulis would have to lay Bobo out with his stun gun, and that would mean no more filming today and trying again tomorrow. Tomorrow she wanted to go back to the Reserve. After that it would be at least two weeks before she got another chance to spend time with Lana, to sit in the sun and groom and be groomed and watch Wang learning the rules of the concrete grove. Eva’s diary was full for three days after that, and then for the next ten she’d be in estrus. This happened once every thirty-five days—your sex parts on your rump swelled up and became tender and the males got excited about you. There were pills Eva could have used to suppress it, but they made her feel sick and low. Being in estrus didn’t bother Eva herself much—far less than she’d expected—and the males at the Reserve wouldn’t have done anything unless she’d let them, but they’d have hung around and begged, and she’d have felt she was making a difference between herself and the other females by shooing them off—and anyway, Mom wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her go to the Reserve like that. By the time estrus was over it would be school again.

Of course she understood why Bobo was upset. Partly it was the lights and Mimi’s beads and the scurry of humans trying to get things done under pressure, but mainly it was something else. Bobo was a young adult male. In his Public Section there were three males older and stronger than him, but here he might have been boss over the five females, given the chance. But there was Mr. Coulis here, and all these other humans, and besides he’d lived most of his life in Research, and now in a Public Area, both of which were even less natural than the Reserve. He didn’t know where to begin. His solution was the usual male one—he threw a tantrum.

“I’m on the big fellow’s side, myself,” said a man’s voice close by.

“I don’t care. I want my coffee break,” said a woman.

Eva sat by herself between takes, not just because there was a chair marked EVA but because anything else was impossible. She was too conscious of her difference from the other chimps to stay with them—in this world they were chimps but she was people—but she didn’t feel like talking to people either. Her only thought was to get the whole thing over with and go away. Now she merely glanced sideways and saw the couple, a pretty woman with a bored face and a plump young man with a pale gold beard. He noticed Eva’s glance and smiled.

“How about you, miss?” he said.

Eva grunted, a no-meaning sound.

“It’s just against reason and nature,” said the man, still speaking to Eva. “Bringing a noble beast like that into this kind of crappy setup and getting him to do anything we fancy, such as being dressed up for laughs in a cowboy outfit. It makes me sick.”

“It’s a living,” said the woman.

“God, now look! They’re going to knock him out!” said the man.

Mr. Coulis was checking the stun gun over. Exasperation flooded through Eva. In a couple of seconds she’d have been up among the lights, screeching and throwing like Bobo, but she just managed to control her fury. She picked up her keyboard from the floor beside her and tapped out a sentence.

“Tell them to turn the lights off.”

The young man nodded and turned away. Eva handed the keyboard to the woman and knuckled across the floor to where Mr. Coulis was raising the stun gun to take aim. He didn’t see her coming until she reached up and pulled the muzzle down. He looked at her, astonished. She shook her head like a human and held up her free hand, palm forward, in a signal for him to wait.

Bobo, sensing that he was losing his audience’s attention, began jumping up and down, making his tower clatter to his rhythm.

Then the main lights went out. Though there were still a few ordinary houselights burning, the effect was like sudden dusk, a forest dark, especially up above among the looped and trailing cables. Bobo was startled into silence. Everyone waited.

Eva knuckled across to the group of females and faced them. They were all, of course, young, used to being bossed by adults and also by humans. They were frightened too, grinning and showing their teeth. Belinda was the brightest of them. Eva held out her hand to her, palm up, moving her forearm gently to and fro, the standard Please help gesture. With four flat fingers she pointed to the tower. Please help again. Then she took Belinda by the wrist and gave a little tug. The other three watched, frightened still but with their grins less toothy. They all understood what Eva wanted. They must all have seen the adult females in the Public Section ganging up, three or four together, to counteract the bullying of one of the males.

Eva turned, still holding Belinda’s wrist but using her free arm to knuckle across to the tower. Belinda didn’t resist. At the foot of the tower Eva let go and began to climb. When she reached the first strut she stopped and looked down. Belinda was hesitating, one hand on an upright, but the other three were now moving, half hypnotized, to join her. Eva beckoned encouragingly and climbed on. Above her, Bobo had stopped his jumping and had begun to screech. The whole studio rang with the racket, but Eva knew it wasn’t as terrifying as it sounded to human ears. To the chimps it meant something different—Bobo himself was scared. Strong as he was he couldn’t cope with five females if they chose to attack him.