“Good evening, Mrs. Adamson. I am fane Callaway, from the legal and contract department of SMI. Before anything else, I must apologize on behalf of the company for the intolerable disturbance you have suffered tonight.”
“It’s awful,” said Mom.
“Let’s have a drink,” said Dad.
“Just fruit juice for me,” said Ms. Callaway. “I’m working.”
Eva knuckled into the kitchen and got the drinks, making Dad’s a bit stronger than usual. Ms. Callaway said Thank you in a perfectly normal way but then sat looking at Eva with cool, considering pale eyes.
“I wish I’d seen her sooner,” she said. “I think I might have realized. It may all die down in a few days, but in my opinion you are going to have to prepare for quite a long period of very intense media interest. That is why I’m here. My job is to work out the problems that arise in cases like this.”
“There can’t be many cases like this!” said Mom.
“There are always unique features,” said Ms. Callaway. “That’s why the public is interested. But the legal basis remains remarkably constant. In my experience, your most straightforward course would be to assign exclusive rights to Eva’s story to a company such as SMI. Part of the contract would be that we protect you from unwanted intrusion. As a private citizen you can’t sue a reporter who tries to question you, but we can, because the reporter is asking you to break your contract with us. Now obviously you don’t want to embark on a long-term contract without thinking it over, but in view of what has happened it would be a sensible course for you to assign the rights to the story in the next few days . . .”
She had opened her briefcase while she was speaking and pulled out a few sheets of paper. She continued to explain, cool, friendly, helpful. Eva stopped listening. There was something about the three of them—Mom and Dad and Ms. Callaway—that puzzled her. Mom was frowning, Dad leaning forward in his chair, bright-eyed, nodding at each fresh point Ms. Callaway made . . . This wasn’t his sort of thing at all, but Mom though she wasn’t a lawyer knew a lot about things like contracts, because her job often involved trying to help people who’d gotten into some kind of legal mess . . . Why was Dad so anxious? Why wasn’t he trying to get his word in, as usual? Was it just that he was tired after the program and still shocked by what had happened on the landing? Or . . .
Out of nowhere the thought floated into Eva’s mind that Dad was acting. He already knew what Ms. Callaway was going to say. He’d already talked to her about all this. And that meant . . .
No, he couldn’t have known it was going to be like this. He hadn’t been acting when he got home. He’d been really frightened, really shocked . . . But suppose Ms. Callaway’s company had realized what was going to happen. Suppose they just allowed it to happen in cases like this and then sent someone like Ms. Callaway along, cool, friendly, helpful, while you had the reporter-pack actually baying on your doormat and all you could think of was getting rid of them. What they’d do was calm Dad down and get him to sort-of-agree not to worry till the time came, and tell him about the long-term contract and the kind of money that would be coming to the Pool, and he’d have sort-of-agreed to that too, and then sort-of-told them about Mom and how she might react to the idea of assigning exclusive rights to her daughter’s story to a shaper company . . .
Slowly Eva tapped a few words into her keyboard and waited for a pause before she pressed the “Speak” bar.
“Do you know who I belong to?”
The three heads jerked around.
“You don’t belong to anyone, darling,” said Mom.
Dad said nothing but looked at Ms. Callaway. She stared at Eva and nodded, like a teacher when someone’s asked the right question.
“As a matter of fact, that is a very interesting point,” she said. “I have, of course been looking into it.”
“Why?” said Mom, sharply.
“Because I am paid to be sure of our legal ground before we undertake long-term commitments. I believe that when animals from the Chimpanzee Pool are sold for research they are sold outright, and the organization doing the research then buys them. But in Eva’s case, because the experiment was carried out by the Pool itself, in cooperation with the Pradesh Institute, no such arrangement was made—in fact, no arrangement was made at all.”
“I suppose I ought . . .” said Dad.
“There might therefore be an argument that Eva’s body, at least, still belongs to the Pool.”
“This is ridiculous,” said Mom. “Anyway, we could pay for her now—we’d have to find the money somehow.”
“The difficulty, Mrs. Adamson, is that Eva is now an extremely valuable piece of property. The trustees of the Pool might well argue ...”
“She isn’t property!”
“Well, I would agree that if the case were to go to court, Eva could eventually be confirmed as a human being—that is to say not belonging to anyone, but with her parents having the usual rights and responsibilities while she remains a minor. Even a point like that raises problems. How old is she? The human Eva is thirteen, but the body she is using is less than six. All I can tell you is that however the courts decide these points, the legal costs in coming to a decision might well prove very considerable indeed. That is why I have drafted a special clause into this contract under which my company accepts that Eva is fully human, with all that that implies, and furthermore, the company undertakes, in the event of your signing a long-term contract with us, to bear all legal costs in arguing the case.”
“You got this all ready beforehand?” said Mom.
Ms. Callaway smiled, unruffled.
“It’s my job to think of difficulties before they happen. The short-term preliminary contract I suggest is only one option. If you would like to discuss ...”
“No. Let’s have a look at it.”
Ms. Callaway passed the papers across. Mom put on her glasses and started to read. Dad beckoned to Eva. She knuckled across, climbed onto his lap, and started to finger through his beard.
“How did it go?” he muttered.
“Didn’t have time to watch much. Joan had just started. Then they turned up.”
She shrugged a shoulder toward the doorway.
“But you’ve got it on tape?”
“Uh.”
They waited. Dad finished his drink. Ms. Callaway sat still, patient as a hunter. At last Mom looked up.
“I suppose that’s the best course,” she said. “You really think you can get rid of them?”
“It has usually worked in the past,” said Ms. Callaway, calm as ever—but then for the first time she gave a small jerk of surprise as Mom turned to Eva.
“Listen, darling. If Dad and I sign this, it means that for the next week we agree not to talk about you to anyone except Ms. Callaway’s company. We don’t have to talk to them either if we don’t want to during that week. But it means that they will have the legal right to shoo everyone else away, and that will give us all time to think. Are you happy about that?”
They had to wait while Eva thought and then, more slowly than usual, set her message up. She made the words come slowly too.
“All right. Only provided you don’t sign anything saying ordinary chimps belong to people either.”
She felt Dad’s body jerk. Then he laughed his infuriating little laugh that meant that what you’d just said was too silly to argue about.
“I don’t think there’s anything . . .” murmured Mom.
“No,” said Ms. Callaway, “and I will make a note to avoid phrases to that effect in future contracts. Now, if you will just sign here . . . and here, Dr. Adamson . . . excellent. And now I will see what I can do about driving the wolves from your door.”
She stood up, patted her hair smooth, and left. The racket from the landing rose as the door opened, then faded. Mom switched on the closed circuit to watch but kept the volume off. Ms. Callaway, flanked by security men, was reading a statement—she must have had that ready too. The camera showed only the back of her head. Microphones jutted toward her. The crowd was listening. Their faces signaled weariness, frustration, defeat. Some at the back were talking into commos. The elevator doors were opening, and several of the crowd were already waiting to board it. When Ms. Callaway stopped reading, some questions were shouted, but she answered with a shake of her head. The elevator went down, crammed. Ms. Callaway came back into the apartment and talked to Mom and Dad about an appointment to which they could bring their own lawyer. By the time she left, the landing was almost empty, and the guards were shoving the last few reporters into the elevator by force. Two of the guards stayed on in case anyone tried to come back.