Peter Dickinson - Eva

YEAR TWO,

MONTH TWELVE,

DAY TEN

Living in tension, waiting . . .

Waking—will the chance come today?

Noon, heat, peace in the ravine, the humans below all resting—now?

Not yet.

Dusk, with drenching rain, tree smell and sea smell. Tomorrow . . . ?

Perhaps.

Eva heard the howler while she was still trying to settle herself into her pelt for the day, fingering around, nosing and nibbling under the hairs, the way you did. She was conscious of having slept badly, for once, and now her fur didn’t seem to want to lie down. The others were uneasy too. She could sense a restlessness, a nerviness. They kept glancing up between the leaves, where the clouds moved low and dark and faster than usual. Then she heard the signal, a burst, cut short, and another burst, and a gap, and again . . . urgent.

Lana was giving Wang his morning once-over. Sniff was grooming Herman—he’d had a run-in with Billy yesterday that had ended with Billy chasing him up a tree, so now he’d evidently decided to make a serious alliance with the much less ambitious third male. The others were fidgety, preoccupied. It was no problem to slip away.

She found Dad inside the fence, with the expedition coordinator, Maria, and Diego, who’d headed the advance party and built the enclosure. They were all three looking at the sky. Out here you could really see how low and dark the clouds were and how fast they were traveling. The wind was up too—she hadn’t heard it in the ravine because of the noise of the stream. It was like no wind Eva had ever felt, a huge block of steamy heat moving all together, like the breath out of a mile-wide mouth.

“We’ve got trouble,” said Dad. “There’s a typhoon on the way. It was supposed to pass on the other side of Madagascar, but now it’s swung in.”

“I told ’em,” said Diego.

“Uh?”

“Apparently we’ve got about five hours. It’s too late to evacuate. Maria wants to get the chimps in.”

“I’m getting the crates lifted up,” said Maria. “If you can get the chimps down here, we’ll put some doped fruit out.”

“Uh-uh,” said Eva and took the keyboard from Dad.

“Don’t think I can,” she explained. “I’m not boss. Sniff’s having trouble with Billy.”

“Good grief,” said Maria. “Couldn’t we lay a trail of fruit?”

“I doubt if you’d get them all,” said Dad.

“What are you going to do with them?” said Eva. “When you’ve got them?”

“Keep them in the crates till it’s over,” said Dad in a flat tone. Knowing him so well, Eva could tell that this was all part of an argument that he’d lost.

“Uh-uh.”

“It’s the best we can do,” said Maria.

“Spoil everything,” said Eva.

“It’s not just that,” said Dad. “Just think what it would be like in the crates, with a typhoon going on. It wouldn’t necessarily be any safer, in my opinion.”

“I told ’em, I told ’em,” said Diego.

“It was getting that damn fence built,” said Maria. “Listen, Eva, you realize there’s every chance that ravine will fill with water, and you’ll all be drowned.”

“Uh?” said Eva, looking at Dad. He shrugged.

“Can’t tell,” said Diego. “Must’ve been typhoons before. The trees in there have stood it.”

“We can climb out, up,” said Eva. “Blossom found a way.”

“Yes, we saw that,” said Dad.

“Why does something like this always have to happen?” said Maria. “Every damn project I’ve ever been on. The better it’s going, the worse it comes.”

“You might get some terrific pictures,” said Eva.

She said it on purpose. At first she’d just been reacting to the immediate problem, the typhoon, and whether she could get the others down and what was the best thing to do. But from what Dad had said about the crates not being any safer she’d realized that the human argument wasn’t really over, and the more weight she could put on his side the more chance there was of staying. He was right anyway. Now that she’d had time to think she was determined not to do what Maria said. If worst came to worst, she’d simply disobey orders. It wasn’t that she’d planned the escape completely yet or was sure it would work or that she’d get anyone except Sniff to go with her, but a break like this . . . they’d have to keep the chimps drugged while the typhoon lasted, or they’d go mad in the crates. They might even decide they’d gotten enough film already and could all go home . . .

Maria was talking into a commo. Diego was watching the sky. All three humans were streaming with sweat.

“Well done,” muttered Dad.

“How soon can you get them down here, Eva?” said Maria.

Eva shrugged. If she’d really wanted to and had enough bananas for bait, she thought she might have managed by late morning. She held up three fingers.

“Three’s the best she can do,” said Maria into the commo. She listened.

“Too late,” she said. “They want to have the flivvers lashed down before then.”

“Tell them to send up more chimp chow,” said Dad. “Several days’ rations. In a steel box with a lock. I’ll leave the key under that rock, darling.”

“What about the fence?” said Maria.

“Still have to switch the alarm off,” said Diego. “That amount of wind, it’ll keep setting itself off. There’ll still be the current, unless we get a lightning strike. They’ll lay low, won’t they? None of ’em have been near the fence for days.”

“What d’you think, darling?” said Dad.

“Uh?”

It took Eva a moment to gather her wits. The whole problem of crossing the fence without setting off the alarm had filled her waking mind for days. Even when she was dreaming the dream she kept finding her path between the branches blocked by live mesh.

“They wouldn’t anyway,” she said. “Happy where they are.”

“God, if I’d been given a whole day’s warning,” said Maria.

“It’ll be all right, my dear,” said Dad. “Personally I think the chimps will be safer up here than we will down on the shoreline. The ravine is good shelter, provided the water doesn’t rise too far, and as Eva says, if worst comes to worst they can always climb out.”

“Least they won’t have tidal waves to look out for,” said Diego.

“I suppose there’s that,” said Maria. “Okay. You win.”

“We’ll be okay,” said Eva.

“Let’s hope,” said Maria. “You’ll be on your own.”

* * *

The wind rose unsteadily. At full force you could hear its shriek even above the rush of the stream. In the lower part of the valley the bushes threshed like waves. And then there would be a lull, though the clouds still raced over, lower than ever now. In these pauses Eva’s pelt seemed to crawl with electricity. The others presumably felt the same. They were uneasy, making short expeditions to the nearer feeding trees and heading back for the ravine after a few mouthfuls. Sniff and Billy seemed to have forgotten their conflict for the moment. Sniff in particular was anxious and now kept his eyes on Eva most of the time, and followed her around. In one of the lulls she took the chance to lead him, by a route she had worked out to avoid the cameras, up the left flank of the valley to where she had been trying during the last few days to weaken the branch she wanted by gnawing a ring around its base. He studied the bite marks, frowning, and smelled them too, then looked in a puzzled way along the length of the branch. Eva made the “Come” signal and led the way on, threading through the scrub-covered slope above where it dropped to the ravine and up on to the bare ridge at the top of the valley, close to the place where Sniff had had his shock. Here the fence crossed the ridge and immediately turned down the mountain. There was a point where you could stand on the outer slope, level with the top of the fence and only about four meters from it. A branch placed here, with its fork weighted with rocks for stability and its butt across the top of the fence . . .