Eva awoke several times in the night. She was oddly restless in her own bed. In the old days she used to sleep on her stomach, stretched right out, but now she felt more comfortable curled up. I’d really like a basket, she thought, a big dog-basket, like a nest. I wonder if Mom would mind. Perhaps if I told her I wanted a round patchwork, to cover it with . . .
Later she woke again and heard voices, Mom and Dad, Mom angry and hurt, Dad trying to talk his way out. They both hated fights, didn’t even like arguments, Dad especially. It was typical he hadn’t ever figured out who owned Kelly, because that would have meant hassle. I’m going to have to watch Dad, Eva thought. Whatever he says, I’m going to see that I own me . . .
Another voice in the early dawn, only a murmur again but unmistakable. Mr. Elian. Creeping out into the living room, she found Dad settling down to watch his big moment. Since she’d missed so much with Mom turning the sound off and then the siege starting, she climbed onto his lap to watch too. He welcomed her by ruffling the fur at the back of her head with easy fingers.
Dad came over well on the shaper. In fact, Eva thought, he seemed more real than he sometimes did at home—sincere, solemn, and honest when he was talking about what had happened to his daughter, and then when he was talking about his chimps still sincere, but clever, excited, eager to make people understand. Now she could actually feel him purring with satisfaction at his own performance.
They watched the program through to the end. It finished with a kiss. When Eva had grabbed Mr. Elian by the collar and given him that mighty, sucking smacker, some cameraman had had the wits to zoom right in and get it in close-up. No professional comic could have reacted quite as beautifully as Mr. Elian did, his horrible self-satisfied calm suddenly ripped away, leaving him with bulging eyes, head uselessly twisted aside, mouth gaping in a yell of fright. Eva hugged herself. Dad laughed his big cheerful bay, which only came when he was genuinely amused.
The zone froze on the kiss, and the credits spun through. That meant they’d cut what Eva had said about being a chimp. Too bad, she thought. People had better start understanding that, or they wouldn’t understand anything.
MONTH SIX,
DAY TWO
Living with fame . . .
Studios, waiting for programs to begin. Glare of shaper lights. How-exactly-does-it-feel . . .
Autographs (no good chimp-grip for a pen). Stares. Giggles.
Money and treats and meeting shaper stars.
A bodyguard, Cormac, in case you got kidnapped. A secretary, foe, to answer the commo and the mail—journalists calling for a quick quote on Miss World or some diet fad, scientists wanting a slice of you (yes, a real slice sometimes, cells to culture, but usually only a slice of time and publicity) . . .
Dad getting offered visiting professorships . . .
People, people, people . . .
As many grapes as you could eat . . .
Not enough time with Mom . . .
Partly it was Eva’s own fault. She would have been stuck with a little fame whatever she’d done. The people at SMI said that long before the program was over, the Public Response Indicators were already registering high interest and excitement. That was why the reporters had been ringing at the door so soon. But if only she’d never kissed Mr. Elian. The PRI Index had really hit the roof then, they said. That’s what the billions of watchers had really gone for. Things that happened in their shaper zones were more solid to them, more important, more exciting than anything that happened in their own lives, and somehow that image—the chimp squatting among the yellow bars of the climbing frame, with the bright butterfly embroidered on her chest, and her glossy pelt and clear gaze, and then the great Dirk Elian panicking in her grip, and the comic, huge-lipped kiss—people could never get enough of it. They had laughed and fallen in love. The sequence was played again and again and copied and parodied and referred to like a proverb everybody knew. On talk shows Eva had to cope with people trying to work themselves into a kiss-me position so that they could share the effect. All the crammed world, even oddballs like the Koos who never watched the shaper, knew about Eva.
Fame could be useful. Mom and the school social worker, who’d been around several times to talk things over before Eva started school again, had been worried about how the other kids would react—whispers, giggles, stares, outright rejection perhaps. Eva herself had been pretty nervous the first day, but in fact there was hardly any of that at all. She found she wasn’t a stranger. The kids felt they already knew her, seeing her so often on the shaper in their own homes. Some of the smaller ones were into a craze for imitating her voice, fluttering their fingers across imaginary keyboards on their chests and then speaking; some of them were so good Eva couldn’t tell the difference. In most ways too, kids were more sensible about fame than adults. The stares and the autographs lasted about two weeks, only. A few of the little ones hung around longer, not because she was famous—not even thinking about that—but because they felt a need to touch and fondle and be happy with a furry creature. Left to herself, Eva would probably have let it happen, but Ginny didn’t like it and shooed the kids off.
Of course, there’d been hours of talk about all this at home. Mom had had the main teachers around and they’d discussed everything they could think of, from security against kidnappers to having a special small desk, but still there’d been things they’d missed . . .
Eva was sitting hunkered on the low wall in the shade of the Language Building with Bren beside her and Ginny just beyond. Ginny was going on about why she was going to give Juan the brush-off, and Bren, half jealous and half enjoying the idea of boys getting punished, was egging her on. A gang of juniors came shrieking around the corner of the building, and Eva’s pelt stirred uncomfortably at the sound, the massed voices of humans, the pack-cry. The whole air was full of the same noise, nearer and farther, and every sitting place was filled, like a roost of starlings, as the out-shift gathered to wait for the in-shift to finish with the classrooms so that they could take their turn. It could have been worse. There were schools in the city that operated on a three-shift system, but they were mostly in the poorer areas. On the wall beyond Ginny a couple of older kids were creating their own little bubble of privacy in a long, motionless kiss. Ginny had gotten around to describing Juan’s eating habits, and Bren was giggling at each fresh exaggeration. They didn’t seem to notice the pressure either. It was as if you were born used to it, the clamor and the jostling, people, people, people. They were the air you breathed, the sea you swam in. But if you weren’t people, you stifled, you drowned . . .