Peter Dickinson - Eva

“I’m afraid that may well be the answer,” said Joan. “At a very early age, thanks to your father’s decision to bring you up in such close contact with the Pool, you may well have learned to think of yourself as actually being a chimpanzee as well as a human, and that deep in your unconscious mind you still do so. The attraction of this theory is that the level at which rejection of the transfer is most likely to occur is very close to the unconscious, the boundary where the human mind has to mesh with the autonomous systems of the animal host.”

The zone had not been switched off. Eva knuckled over and circled it, staring at the thing on the bed. She had her horror under control now, but if anything it was stronger than before. Before, she had simply felt it, in her shivers, in her howling, but now she thought it too. These humans, they couldn’t know. They cared, they were sad, but they couldn’t understand. This was what humans did to animals, one way or another. This was what they’d always done. The ghastly little wrigglers that had invaded Grog’s bloodstream had more right to be there than Stefan had to be in Caesar, or Eva herself in Kelly.

She grunted and turned to Joan.

“So I’m going to be the only one?” she said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nobody else has been brought up with chimps.”

“That is only one theory. In any case, we shall have to see.”

“You’re going to do more ?”

“Sasha is due to wake in eleven days, and I shall certainly explore the possibilities of further experiments. We cannot let it rest there. But first I think we must have a session with Dr. Alonso and the animal psychology team—your father too, of course ...”

Eva didn’t go straight to the parking lot—Cormac had a new comic book so he wouldn’t mind waiting. She rode elevators and scuttled along corridors until she had found her way back to Grog’s room. He was lying as she’d left him, with his eyes closed. The tape was running.

“. . . then what about all the people down at Cayamoro?” her voice was saying. “The scientists, for instance. They’re ...”

She crossed the room silently and switched it off. Grog opened his eyes.

“I’ve changed my mind,” she said. “We’ve got to try. I’ll help you.”

YEAR TWO,

MONTH THREE,

DAY SEVENTEEN

Living with a purpose.

Waking with it already at work in your mind.

Allies, enemies, schemes, failures.

Secrets.

Even in the minute-by-minute life of the Reserve, thinking all the time.

One day . . . somehow . . .

By the time Grog’s beard was long enough to groom again he could sit up, write letters, talk for an hour at a time. At the request of Stefan’s parents, Joan Pradesh had put Stefan back into coma and let him stay there. There had been the girl called Sasha and a chimp called Angel. Joan’s team had let them wake with their whole mouth working, and they had screamed all the time they were awake. They had done this for nine days, and then they had died.

It was supposed to be a secret, but Eva had told Grog and Grog had told a reporter he knew (of course). There was going to be a press conference this evening. The university was very jumpy about it because it was pretty well certain Joan would put everyone’s back up and then sponsors would get scared and funds would be cut. So they’d arranged for Eva to be there too, clever, famous, popular Eva, the whole world’s favorite cuddly toy—if Eva told people it was all right, then the fuss would die down and the funds would go on rolling in and that was all that mattered in the world . . .

“You don’t need to worry,” Grog had said. “There’ll be quite a few people on our side down in the audience—I’ve been rounding them up. If it doesn’t come up some other way Mike will ask you a direct question ...”

“Uh?”

“You’ll know him—a blind white blob. Get a few lines ready on your tape. Be nice about Joan. After that, just play it by ear. This is our first big chance, but don’t let that scare you. They all love you out here, remember.”

Eva was trying not to think about it because it was a waste of her morning in the Reserve. Though she spent every spare minute she had here now, it still wasn’t enough—not just because she was happier here, more herself, either. In fact, that wasn’t true. Visits to the Reserve were sometimes very unsatisfactory, difficult or boring or frightening, harder to control than human life. And human life was a lot of fun, often exciting and interesting, and easier every day as people got used to her . . .

But that was all beside the point. She needed to be at the Reserve more, for the purpose. Suppose the impossible came true and Grog found a place where they could go and together they persuaded Dad and the others to let them, to help them when they got there, and all the other parts of the dream slotted in, what would be the use if the chimps themselves weren’t ready? You couldn’t tell them what was going to happen, teach them how to cope, any of that, so “ready” just meant trusting Eva, being prepared to follow her lead—an outsider, a female, a juvenile, coming and going at random. Not easy.

Winter had been tough. Some days the chimps hardly went out into the open at all but stayed in their “caves” squabbling for places nearest the heated patches of wall and floor. In those close unnatural quarters tempers were bad, and the signals for keeping them in control didn’t always work. Tatters and Geronimo had several real fights, with serious bite wounds. By the end of the winter Tatters was boss, which was a bad thing all around, because Geronimo used to use his authority to keep the fights among the females from getting serious, by siding with the one who looked as if she was losing, which was why on the whole the females had supported him, but Tatters wasn’t clever enough for that. By the time the spring sun was strong enough to lounge and scratch in, the whole group was in a sour mood.

Lulu stole Wang deliberately. She must have been waiting her chance for some time, not only for Wang to get far enough away from Lana to be grabbed and run off with but also for Tatters to be somewhere near. In fact, thinking about it afterward, Eva realized that she had been half aware of Lulu sitting about a dozen paces off, watching Beth’s group most of the time but also glancing over her shoulder as if looking for something out of sight of the rest of them. They should have been aware of the danger. Lulu had never managed to rear a baby of her own because her deafness kept her from hearing the cries and whimpers that would have told her its needs, so she couldn’t really be trusted near someone else’s. Unfortunately Beth was in a cantankerous mood, and the other three were preoccupied with watching for a sudden attack from her. The first they knew of the kidnapping was Wang’s cluttering scream as Lulu dashed away, dragging him by one arm and bashing him casually against the hard ground as she went.

Lana raced after her, shrieking, with Eva close behind. They galloped around the corner of a slab and stopped dead because Tatters was there, facing them, with his hair bushed out and his face drawn into a hoot. Beth and Beth’s group had supported Geronimo longer than any of the other females, and Tatters hadn’t yet forgiven them. Lulu settled down behind Tatters and started grooming Wang, holding him upside down by one leg while he struggled and shrilled. Lana shrieked at Lulu until Tatters rushed at her. Eva raced in to try and grab Wang while his back was turned, but Tatters must have seen what she was up to, because just as she faced Lulu’s snarl, looking for an opening, she felt a stunning buffet on the side of her head and was spun sideways across the rough concrete. Before she could rise, Tatters landed on her with all his weight, driving her back to the ground. The breath shrieked out of her. As Tatters jumped to come down again she managed to wriggle sideways so that he half missed his footing, giving her a moment to tumble herself right over into one of the pits and out of sight. By the time Tatters realized what had happened, she was out on the far side of the pit and swinging up one of the iron trees.