Peter Dickinson - Eva

Eva pointed to the place and made gestures. Sniff considered the problem, frowning. She could sense him trying to estimate distances. He grunted doubtfully, then raised his head and stared at the far trees. The upper end of the wooded patch was hidden in the cloud base. He was still looking when the lull ended. The hot wind came booming off the ocean, so strong now that they had to crouch beneath its weight. When Sniff faced it, it sleeked his pelt like silk, but when he turned for the shelter of the valley the wind got under the fur and bushed it out as if he’d been displaying. He led the way now, following the route they’d taken, down to the tree with the weakened branch. The wind was roaring through the treetops, making them bow all one way, like weeds in a stream. Sniff looked at the branch for a few seconds and began to climb. He clambered slantwise up it and gripped another, stouter branch that crossed it about five meters up. With his feet on the lower branch he heaved them apart until he was standing like a triumphant weight lifter with his arms raised above his head. The branch creaked. Eva gnawed at the straining fibers, feeling them snap as the cut opened. The branch gave with a crash, leaving Sniff dangling in midair, but he swung himself up and climbed down, panting not with the effort but with excitement. Together they twisted the branch free and broke off the twigs and side shoots. Eva wondered whether the microphones had picked up the noise. She guessed so, but the wind would cover most of it, and in any case, the chimps did a fair amount of crashing around in the ordinary course of things.

They dragged the branch up the slope and out into the open. The wind was really howling now. A human could hardly have stood in it. Sniff immediately tried to raise the branch toward the top of the fence but Eva only pretended to help. It was too soon to get that far. Diego might not have switched the alarm off yet, and in any case, suppose they did get it in place, Sniff would insist on trying to cross and then perhaps get stuck outside. But he was raring to go and almost managed it on his own before a sudden new blast of wind made him give up. Crouching under its force, he glared at the fence top and the mountain beyond, then snorted and led the way back.

The others were all in the ravine, huddled together, nervous, waiting. Down here you could hardly feel the wind, but you could hear its shriek and see the black ominous clouds racing above the threshing treetops. The chimps’ alarm was like an odor, something they all breathed and shared. Wang clung close to Lana, as if he’d been a baby, and Tod huddled in Dinks’s arms with a wide, terrified grin. The same white fear signal gleamed on every dark face. Eva was grooming Lana, trying to calm her, when the rain started.

It struck the mountain like a flail. You heard the crash of its coming, and then you were under water. Not just drenched, drowning. Can’t breathe! Tidal wave! No, of course not, not this high, but for a minute it felt like that, as though the whole ocean had hummocked itself up and crashed down on the island. Eva gasped, struggling for breath, clutching the branch beside her, forgetting everything except her own immediate survival. Below her she saw the stream leap in its bed. One moment it had been tumbling down its rocky channel in the floor of the ravine and the next it was crashing, white, from cliff to cliff. As the first wall of rain passed by, somebody scrambled, snorting, up beside her—Sweetie-pie, drenched and grinning with terror. The opposite tree had one comfortable branch that hung low, only a meter or so above the floor of the ravine. Last time Eva had looked a couple of chimps had been sitting there, but now the branch was straining in the torrent and they were gone. She peered through the downpour and saw movement, several chimps climbing higher, others reaching down to help them. Something about their attitudes, the way they had gathered on the branches closest to the cliff, told her that they were in shelter—yes, of course, when she’d been out in the open with Sniff the wind had been from that side. Carefully she made her way across the network of branches and found she was right. It was like coming into a house out of the rain, so sudden was the difference. She went back and with some difficulty coaxed Lana to cross, and then Sweetie-pie. Seeing them go, the rest came too.

There were barely enough perches to go around. Once they were settled Eva worked her way along the huddled line and counted. Eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. All safe. But now she couldn’t find anywhere to perch herself till Sniff shoved Herman over enough on the branch they were sharing to make room for her. She settled and looked at the torrent, trying to see if it was still rising. After that first tremendous buffet of water the downpour had lessened, though it was still heavier than any rain Eva had ever seen, lashed by the wind against the farther cliff as if sprayed from firehoses. The whole mountainside must be streaming. If enough of it gathered here the ravine, as Maria had said, would fill right up, or far enough at least to tear the trees from their roothold in the cliffs. Before that happened they must move. The others, even Sniff, would be difficult to persuade, to make understand the danger. She set herself marks on the opposite cliff and tried to estimate whether the tumbling water was getting nearer. After a long while she decided it was, but slowly. No need to worry yet.

By then Eva had realized how cold it had gotten. At first her slight sense of chill seemed the natural result of drying out after her drenching, but even when she was dry she found she was shivering, and was glad of the warmth of Sniff’s body. Not that it could have been cold by the standards of winter in the Reserve, but compared with the steady, steamy heat of the last week, when even chimps, who had evolved for a climate like that, had needed to rest through the middle of the day, the change was extraordinary.

How long did typhoons last? Two or three days, she seemed to remember. They were huge, intense eddies in the atmosphere, sweeping along on curving paths, weren’t they? If that was right you’d get the wind blowing harder and harder the nearer the center came, with the isobars packing in, and then it would change direction—you’d only get a lull if the center passed straight over you—and you’d have about the same amount of time before it was over. Anyway, it was going to get worse before it got better. The leaves of the tree they perched in were leathery and bitter. They had already stripped the ravine of anything edible.

Time was impossible to estimate. The howling minutes seemed like hours, but Eva noticed that as the wind rose the rain seemed to get less. Night would come with its usual rush, and then it would be pitch-dark, not even a firefly for guidance. Better go now. With a grunt of decision Eva started to move through the branches, then turned and made the “Come” sign to Sniff. He looked at her as if she were mad but stayed where he was, and she went on alone.

There was no way out along the flooded floor, so she took the route Blossom had found up the farther cliff. As she came out of the shelter the wind seemed to lift her the last stretch and then try and blow her on up the slope above. Keeping low to the ground, clutching at bushes and boulders, she worked her way sideways along the slope and down into the valley.

Here the wind was less, no more than gale force, but above her it crashed through the straining treetops, making sharp explosions like gunfire where some big wet leaf was slapping itself to tatters, and shrieking between the thinner branches so loudly that Eva was forced to stop and stuff moss into her ears to try and dull the pain. The whole floor of the valley, including the patch under the palms where they usually slept, was flooded. She made her way around the edge of the water, down through the area of scrub and out into the open. The stream had gathered itself into a torrent again and was foaming down the mountain. The rain was almost over. She could see right down to the coast, and beyond that white foam and black water under a sky as dark as nightfall. Creeping close above the ground, clutching at boulders, she made her way to the place Dad had shown her, found the key, and opened the steel chest. The chimp chow came in five-kilo sacks. She took two out of the chest and relocked it, then struggled back with one bag gripped between her teeth and the other under her arm. She had to leave the second one out above the ravine in order to climb down.