Eva (14 page)

She saw Eva’s fingers move on the keys and paused.

“Not to save my life. Just to know.”

Joan nodded.

“All right,” she said, “though that is not entirely fair. I was delighted for Eva and her parents when our first transfer succeeded. Eva herself could tell you how unhappy I was about what had happened in the case of Stefan and of Sasha ...”

“Caesar?” interrupted Eva. “Angel?”

“Who? Oh, the two chimpanzees. No, my feelings about them are different, and I would maintain quite properly so. Their lives have not been wasted. We have learned less than we hoped from them, but we might have learned a great deal and that is my justification. In this case, the knowledge might have led almost immediately to the saving or prolonging of human life, but when my father began his work with flatworms such an outcome could not have been foreseen. Flatworms are fairly primitive life-forms, and no doubt some of you would want to draw a line somewhere on the scale between them and the chimpanzees, above which it would be improper to use the animal. This makes no sense to me. I do not know how many flatworms died in the course of our experiments—the figure must have run into thousands—but I do know that not one of them died unnecessarily. By their deaths each of them minutely advanced human knowledge. Without their deaths Eva would not be here today.”

As she let go of the microphone the silky man grabbed it and edged away. Still up on the table, Eva sat down and huddled into herself. She felt empty, despairing, her big chance wasted. The journalists had looked at her, but they hadn’t listened. They weren’t interested. All most of them wanted to do was to get the conference back to the humans, to Stefan and Sasha and what had happened to them, and how ghastly it must have been for their families, and so on. “One at a time, one at a time,” the silky man kept saying.

As the shouting rose Eva bowed her head. She was wearing a pair of yellow overalls, Mom’s latest, lightweight because of the shaper lights, with a huge green-and-purple butterfly on the bib. The shouts and arguments—Mike and Grog’s other friends were still trying to ask questions about chimp rights—had their usual effect of making her pelt prickle and bush out, so that she could feel the pressure of the overalls enclosing her. She felt like a bubble, a bubble of frustration and anger, and now the bubble seemed to be inside her, rising up, so that she had to leap to her feet and face the human pack and let the bubble burst out in one loud bark, which echoed around the room in the sudden silence.

It wasn’t enough. She had to do or say something more. They were waiting. Not words, nothing human. Deliberately she let her inward urges loose. Her hands gripped the hem of her bib and dragged it up until she could nick the point of a corner tooth into the cloth. She pulled down. The hem gave. Using all her strength, she ripped the overalls apart right down to the crotch and let go. The yellow cloth crumpled around her ankles. She stepped out of the mess and knuckled away naked along the table, past Joan, past the silky man where he sat clutching the microphone, down off the table, and out of the room. Behind her she heard the trance of silence break. She did not glance back. The bay of the human pack dwindled along the corridor.

YEAR TWO,
MONTH FIVE,
DAY NINE

You reach a sort of calm where you all accept that what’s done’s done, but there’s no going back to where you were before. When Mom comes home from work you get her her vodka and orange juice and give her a hug, but you don’t sit in her lap and finger through her hair while she drinks it. You listen to Dad at supper, and make encouraging grunts and ask the right questions, but you don’t ask the wrong questions—nothing about the future of the Reserve, nothing about funds, nothing about Grog.

You have to learn about Grog in other ways, because you aren’t allowed to see him anymore.

The morning after the press conference Ms. Callaway had come over. She had telephoned before and asked Mom and Dad to stay at home and for Eva not to go to school. She explained that by publicly criticizing Honeybear for dressing chimps up in human clothes Eva had broken important clauses in the contracts with World Fruit and SMI. They would overlook it this time, but they were going to insist on a strict code from now on about what Eva was allowed to do or say. If she broke any of the code, they wouldn’t just cut off funds to the Pool and Eva’s company, they would also sue Eva’s company for damages. Eva’s company had no assets except Eva herself, and she was highly valuable. The legal question of whom she belonged to was still unresolved, so any lawsuit was likely to be extremely expensive, and might end with Eva finding that she belonged to SMI, a piece of property they could do what they liked with . . .

Eva was amazed. She’d known before she got home that Mom was going to be upset—very upset—and Dad might be angry, which he had been. But this level of fuss! It was almost mad, except that Mom and Dad didn’t seem quite so surprised.

“Now is this all quite clear to you too, Eva?” Ms. Callaway had said.

“On a talk show or something—if they ask me?”

“You must support the policies and products of the companies in question.”

“Uh-uh.”

“In that case you had better refuse invitations to appear on programs other than those in which an agreed list of questions is adhered to. This will somewhat restrict your appearances, I’m afraid.”

“Okay. Provided they don’t stop me from going to the Reserve.”

Ms. Callaway didn’t know about the Reserve and looked blank.

“If you must,” said Mom.

“Out of harm’s way,” said Dad.

“I must further emphasize,” said Ms. Callaway, “that SMI owns complete rights to all reproductions of any performance by Eva, and this includes the unfortunate episode last night. They will refuse permission for all future showings of it, and any such showings will be illegal. All tapes will be regarded as pirated, and their owners prosecuted. Any support by you for such a showing, public or private, will be treated as a breach of the contract, with the consequences I have spoken of. I expect you recorded the conference—may I have the tape, please?”

It was still in the shaper. Eva hadn’t seen it—she’d been waiting for a moment when Mom wasn’t around. Now Dad took it out without a word and gave it to Ms. Callaway, who put it in her briefcase and left. She hadn’t said anything about Grog that time. That came later.

Eva had only begun to understand what she’d done as the day went on.

“That was something!” Cormac had exclaimed. “That was really
something
!”

“You were great!” Bren had told her.

“Terrific!” Ginny had agreed.

Mr. Sellig had wanted to scrap the prepared subject for that afternoon’s ethics lesson and have a discussion on animal rights, but Eva had told him she wasn’t allowed to.

On the news programs that evening rival companies had shown pictures of chimps, and extinct animals, and were snide about the fact that SMI was refusing permission to let anyone show the sequence.

Grog had called. It was difficult with Mom in the room, so Eva had answered mainly with grunts.

“How’s things?”

“Mmmm.”

“Lil and Dan not too happy?”

“Uh.”

“Tell them I’m sorry—no, better not. From my point of view it was . . . hell, Eva, I’d never guessed—I was just keeping my fingers crossed and you came up with
that
!”

“Uh?”

“Not seen it yet?”

“Uh-uh.”

“You’d better be quick. SMI is going flat out to suppress every damn tape. Anyway, it’s just what I wanted. We’re off. I’m setting up office tomorrow.”

“Uh!”

(The idea of Grog in an office was a contradiction in terms.)

“Sure. You’ve opened the gates. It’s a tide. It’s a wave. Now we’ve got to ride it. See you.”

He hung up.

“Grog?” Mom had asked.

“Uh.”

“It’s all his fault.”

Three days later a letter had come from Ms. Callaway saying that any attempt on Eva’s part to see or talk to Giorgio Kennedy or any persons connected with any organization set up by him for the return of chimpanzees to a natural habitat would be treated as a breach of contract.

So from then on, no Grog, no face-to-face. Eva saw him quite often on the shaper, though, leading marches, lobbying politicians, addressing meetings. The cameras wouldn’t be interested in him, but he always seemed to have one of their darlings along with him, some singer, some sports star, some billionaire’s boyfriend. Before long the demos were big enough to attract the shaper cameras in their own right. There were banners with slogans, and a symbol—not a chimp but a broken butterfly, one bright wing ripped apart. More and more you saw the same symbol sprayed on to walls as you were driven around the city. Kids at school started coming for autographs again, bringing cards with the broken butterfly printed in one corner.

“Uh-uh,” Eva said, and explained that she wasn’t allowed to, but she signed a separate piece of paper for them to stick on to the card later. Grog had been right, she realized. The movement was a wave. She could feel it all the time now, in the way people reacted to her. The singers and sports stars were only the glitter at the crest, but underneath came the growing surge of ordinary people, millions now, thinking the same thoughts, asking the same questions, moving in the same direction to the same end.

Early one evening, before Mom was home, Mimi Venturi telephoned.

“Eva, my pretty, is something I wish to discuss. I have this idea.”

“Uh?”

“You come here, to my apartment? Tuesday morning.”

“I thought we were doing a commercial.”

“Is cancelled. That stupid Grog.”

“Uh?”

“All his fault. You come?”

“You know I’m not allowed to talk to him?”

“Is in Berlin. No time for his poor mama. That boy!”

“How is he?”

“Is well. Is happy. Is boring—I send a car.”

“Okay.”

Mimi’s apartment was a good kilometer in the air. A real butler answered the door.

“Ms. Venturi is not yet home,” he said. “If you do not mind waiting.”

He showed Eva into the living room. It was almost dark, because the blinds were down, shutting out what must have been a stupendous view. Grog was sitting in an armchair reading a file.

Eva hesitated a moment, then scuttled across the carpet and leaped onto his lap. He laughed and ran his fingers across her pelt. Eagerly she began an inspection of his new beard.

“Great to see you,” he said. “You don’t have to worry—Mother smuggled me in.”

“Sh. Cormac’s in the hall.”

“I’ve told Bill to settle him down in front of a good loud space epic. How’s things? Difficult at home?”

“Uh.”

“Poor Lil—wish I could talk to her.”

“No good.”

“Not yet—someday, maybe. I’ve been in touch with Danhe’ll swing around.”

“Huh!”

“We’re going to need him. He knows a lot of essential stuff. When he finds where the future’s going, he’ll join. 1 don’t mean just to stay working. He’s enough of a scientist to want to be where the real stuff is happening. Now sit still. There’s something I want to show you. I’m just back from a demo in Berlin—our biggest yet. I’ve got a tape. Look.”

He switched the shaper on. The zone filled with people walking toward the camera, ten abreast. It closed in on a tiny figure in the front rank, blue-eyed, golden-haired, wearing a pair of green overalls with a broken butterfly on the bib. Eva recognized her at once—Tanya Olaf had rocketed up the charts out of nowhere five months ago and stayed at the top ever since.

“Whoo!” said Eva.

“Looks good in our get-up,” said Grog.

Eva caught a glimpse of him marching in the rank behind, a little to the left. She felt a silly pang of jealousy—since she’d been stopped from going on talk shows she hadn’t been meeting people like Tanya.

“What’s she like?” she said.

“Pure bitch, doesn’t give a damn about chimps but knows the right place to be seen. Done us a song—not bad—you’ll hear it. Now that fellow there, the one with the blue chin, he’s going to be useful. He’s General Secretary of DKFD—that’s the main European ...”

“Whoo!”

Eva had snorted because the zone had changed. The camera had swung up and at the same time withdrawn until Tanya and Grog and the other leaders had dwindled to tiny figures at the bottom of the zone and behind them she now could see, stretching away down the tree-lined boulevard, out of sight in the distance but still coming on, thousands beyond thousands, the rest of the march.

“Good moment,” said Grog.

“You got all those people out?”

“
You
got them out. Didn’t you realize that? I’ve just been working on the results.”

The scene jumped. It was dusk now, a different street, the march going by, singing, faces under the lamp glare, the broken butterfly everywhere. And now it was a sports arena, every seat full and a solid mass of people crammed on to the central space around a floodlit stage. The music stopped and the lights went out. Silence, and then a bay of cheering as a public zone sprang up on the stage—a table draped with blue cloth, a woman speaking into a microphone, on one side of her a gray-haired man with a fretful look and on the other, sitting up on the table in a withdrawn huddle, a chimp in yellow overalls.

There was a curious note in the cheering, not just excitement but challenge.

“First time we’ve risked it in public,” said Grog.

“I’ve never seen it.”

“You haven’t!
They
all have.”

The woman sat down. The man grabbed the microphone. The heads of journalists bobbed in the foreground. In the sudden silence you could hear their calls and the man bleating, “One at a time, please.” You could feel the huge crowd holding its breath, waiting. The chimp jumped to her feet and barked. The sound was like an explosion, ringing out and then echoing off the cliffs of the arena. The cameras closed in till she filled the zone, staring at the crowd. Her rage, her misery, were solid things, as tangible and visible as the table beneath her. She paused and then, with a single firm movement, gripped the bib of her overalls in both hands, lifted the hem to her mouth, bit, and tore. The rasp of the rending cloth filled the night. The bright butterfly fell in two. With her black pelt shining under the lights as if electric with animal energies, the chimp knuckled along the table, blotting out the two humans as she passed them, and was gone.

The cheering rose, the roar of the human wave. There was a new note in it now, more than the challenge to the fat-cat companies that had been trying to suppress the tape, a sense of excitement, of something special and extraordinary having happened. Eva could feel it too, with her human mind. A message had been passed, an immense gap bridged. The movements of the chimp on the table had expressed what Eva had felt at the conference—she’d known that at the time—but she now saw that they said much more. They spoke for Kelly and the other chimps and all the children of earth, the orangs and giraffes and whales and moths and eagles, which over the past few centuries had turned their backs on humankind and crawled or glided or sunk away into the dark.

“Terrific moment,” said Grog. “Time you saw it.”

“Not art,” said Mimi’s voice from the door. “Therefore not great moment.”

“Just don’t talk crap, Mother,” said Grog.

She sprang forward, her red cape swirling behind her, a handful of bangles swinging like brass knuckles. Eva jumped clear in time for Grog to catch the flailing arm by the wrist and pull his mother down onto his lap, where he pinioned her close. It was clearly a movement they’d had plenty of practice at.

“You say crap to your mother—you who are snatching the bread from my mouth!”

“Hey! So it’s right about the bread!”

“Already I told you! The banana merchants are trying to cancel my contract! They will pay me in blood! Eva, call McAulliffe!”

“Uh?” said Eva.

“Her lawyer,” said Grog. “She calls him nine times a day. Now wait a moment, Mother. I’m going to let you go, and if you bite me, Eva’s going to bite you right back. Show her your teeth, Eva—give them a good gnash. Ouch! You . . . ! Get her, Eva!”

Mimi was on her feet, calmly undoing the clasp of her cloak. With a queenly gesture she flung it over Grog and turned smiling to Eva. Eva snickered back at her. She liked Mimi—Mimi would have gotten on well in the Reserve, she thought. Grog tossed the cloak aside and sat licking his forearm.

“Let’s get this straight,” he said. “Honeybear is definitely trying to stop the chimp commercials because our boycott is beginning to pressure them!”

“I will not pressure them only, I will massacre them! Get me McAulliffe!”

“Hold it, hold it. What are they going to do instead? Why can’t they go back to the series they had you lined up for before Eva came along?”

“Because the little poof who dreamed it up has gone off to a new agency, using same idea for different yucky drink.”

“So they’re stuck. Great. It’s a bit early, but we’ve got to ride the wave. We’ve got to have some kind of success to show our people, or the movement’s going to fold. Nobody’s got any staying power any longer. Okay. Mother, you really reckon you can make yourself enough of a nuisance to World Fruit for them to think it’s worth buying you off?”