Peter Dickinson: Eva

“Might be fun. And lots of grapes.”

“Is that all you can think of? I’m trying to explain to you that quite soon SMI is going to start wanting to film you again. They did some while you were asleep, but Joan wouldn’t let them since then because it might have . . . oh, it’s too long to explain. Anyway, they’re going to do this program and some more after, perhaps, and they’ve spent so much money on you that they’re bound to want to make a production of it, and ...”

“Do I have to?”

“Well, yes, at least one. That’s in the contract. After that . . . You see, if people are interested in you, enough of them, then that’s going to mean more programs, and that’s going to mean money coming in, not just for you and Dad and me—I mean it’d be nice, but we don’t really . . . You see, we actually owe Joan, morally I mean, for what she’s done. Then there’s the Pool ...”

Mom sighed. The Pool was always desperate for funds. It was a fact that Eva had grown up with, almost like the law of gravity.

“Okay,” she said. “If it’s for the Pool.”

“I knew you’d say that.”

“Provided they don’t try and make out I’m some kind of freak.”

A pause. Mom sort of squaring her shoulders, inside.

“There’s bound to be a bit of that, darling. I mean, we’ve got to get used to the idea that people are going to stare. Some people. I suppose in the long run it’s going to be up to you to show them you’re not.”

In her skiing fantasy Eva had imagined the gawps of the other skiers as she careered down the slopes. And school—of course heads would turn when she first came into class, but kids get used to things pretty quickly. She hadn’t really thought about living her life as the object of an endless stare. People!

No, you didn’t have to have people, not all the time.

“Okay,” she said. “And when it gets to be too much, I can always go and join the Pool and be a chimp for a while.”

She felt Mom’s body stiffen beneath her, as if she’d gotten a cramp. Eva thought she’d just been keeping the conversation going, but now . . . yes, better get it said. It was important.

“It’s all right, Mom. I’ll only go to the Reserve.”

“Are you serious?”

“Mind you, if I went to a Public Section, people wouldn’t know which one was me. I’d have to take my clothes off, of course.”

“ Please , darling ...”

“It’s all right, Mom.”

“Let’s talk about something else.”

That was family code, just like a chimp code, only in words—a way of not getting into an argument. You chose another subject and hoped the argument would simply go away, like a headache—only this one, Eva knew, wasn’t going to, but for now she obeyed the code.

“What about clothes, then?” she said.

“Yes, we’ve got to work that out. Have you got any ideas?”

“Bow in my hair?”

Mom managed a laugh. She’d always loved making clothes for her pretty daughter. The chimps in the Pool mostly wore nothing but were dressed in child’s overalls when Dad took them on expeditions, partly because they weren’t housebroken and had to use diapers, but mainly to hide the sexual swellings on the rumps of the females, which people who didn’t know about chimps always found embarrassing.

“I’m a different shape now,” said Eva.

“A challenge, darling. I’ll bring my tape measure tomorrow.”

“Nothing fancy, Mom. I hate it in the commercials when they put chimps into frills. Just overalls, mostly.”

“I suppose so.”

“I’m not going to try and look human.”

Silence, but Eva could feel the sigh.

“It’s important, Mom. I’ve got to be happy with this new me, and so do you. Not just think it’s better than me being dead. Happy to have me like this.”

“I’m trying, darling. I really am trying.”

Poor Mom. It was much harder for her. When you’re born you get imprinted with your mother’s face, and she with yours. It happens with a lot of animals, some more strongly than others. With humans it’s about middling, but the bond is still there, deep inside you, hard to alter. Eva still had the same Mom she’d always known, but Mom had this new thing, this stranger, this changeling. She couldn’t help yearning in her depths for her own daughter, the one with the long black hair and blue eyes and the scar on her left earlobe where a chimp had bitten her when she was three. However much she taught herself to think of this new Eva as that daughter, it wasn’t the same as feeling she was.

It was unfair to push her too hard. Eva stopped grooming Mom’s hair and took her hand and held it, human-style. Mom squeezed back but let go. Eva’s was not the hand she needed, not any longer. It was long and bony-fingered with hair on the back. How could anyone pretend it was her daughter’s?

And, Eva knew, Mom was trying harder than anyone else would, ever.

MONTH TWO,

DAY TWENTY-FIVE

Awake.

Standing by the window, looking down, nerve ends electric . . .

Like standing on a cliff top, imagining falling . . .

Falling into the world, people, people, people . . .

Having to move among them, to begin to live . . .

“Big day,” said Robbo.

Eva turned at the sound of his voice. He stood smiling at the door, handsome as a shaper cop. His skin glistened like a fresh nut. He was wearing a brand-new outfit, straight from the store, with fawn trousers molded to his legs and a loose fawn jacket above. He’d had his hair styled and his mustache trimmed. It was a big day for everyone.

“I like the butterfly,” he said.

“Mom couldn’t resist it.”

It was gold-and-purple, stitched on to the left pocket of Eva’s new green overalls. She liked it too.

“Let’s see you walk, then . . . You call that walking?”

“You want me to do tricks? ”

She didn’t get the sneer quite right. Practicing when you were alone wasn’t the same as talking, and she still made mistakes. Robbo was used to it and hardly noticed, but from today on it mattered. People judge other people by their voices. If you sound stupid, you are stupid. If you don’t sound real, you aren’t—you’re not a person.

“I’ve seen chimps walking,” said Robbo. “Of their own accord.”

“When they’ve got something to carry. Like I’ve seen humans crawling.”

“Okay, okay, walk how you want. Let’s go and look at this gym, huh? They’ve just about gotten it finished in time.”

He turned and held the door for Eva as if going through it was the most ordinary thing you could think of. Last evening, while Dad and Joan and Ali and Meg and the rest of the team had stood around, Dr. Richter had ceremonially removed the last pair of sensor cables that tied her to the machines. Champagne corks had popped. Everyone had wished her good luck. And today she was free. Going through the door was like being hatched, coming out of her safe egg into the huge world.

The world was a shambles. First there was a little empty vestibule and beyond that the control room, where new machines were being uncrated; technicians were arguing over a wiring diagram; a supervisor was frowning at a printout. Eva knuckled through the mess beside Robbo and out into a wide hospital corridor. She was glad now of the boring exercises he and the physios had made her do all the last seven weeks. She felt none of the tiredness and heaviness you’d have expected after all that time in bed—in fact, an exhilarating lightness filled her, becoming stronger and stronger until she lost control and went scampering on ahead, hooting with pleasure as she ran.

Then she stopped dead, with all the hairs along her back prickling erect. Her call had been answered, not with the same call but with a series of short breathy barks on a slightly rising note snapped off into silence. A chimp call. Eva had never heard it before, but she knew, or rather she felt, what it meant. Alone , it said. Lost. Frightened. Where are you? She felt the answer rising in her throat but suppressed it as Robbo caught up with her.