I must get me some bugs of my own, she thought. Mom’s not going to like that.
“How was it, darling?”
“Okay. A little like the first day of school. I think some of them sort of guessed I was funny, but then they forgot.”
Mom had tried to make her question casual but you could hear the edge in it. Eva, on the other hand, could control her tone exactly, using the box. It wasn’t fair, but it couldn’t be helped.
“I’m going to find lots out for Dad,” she said.
“Good.”
Not fair, either. Eva was preparing Mom to accept that she was going back to the Pool as often as she could. At the same time she was concealing the argument she’d had with Dad, first because of moving out of sight and then by losing all track of time, so that in order to attract her attention he’d had to break the Reserve rule of not making the chimps aware of the human presence more than he had to. Still, she was fairly certain he wouldn’t tell Mom. He was too excited about the new project of having Eva see if she could teach any of Beth’s group to tie knots, and then whether they would pass the skill on.
Eva felt odd about all this. She had always been so open with Mom in the old days, so close and trusting. Now, though she was a little ashamed and guilty about what was happening, it was only a little. It was like the pang you get looking through old photographs and seeing someone who used to be a best friend but you haven’t thought about for years. I must write her a card, you tell yourself, and perhaps you do, but that’s all.
Eva pressed the keys again, coding in pleasure and excitement.
“I made a friend,” she said.
“That’s nice,” said Mom automatically, but stopped her next sentence before she’d begun it. Why don’t you ask her over? it would have been, but that didn’t make sense now.
MONTH SIX,
DAY ELEVEN
Living two lives . . .
Yesterday the Reserve, the silent iron trees, the sunlight . . .
Friendly fingers creeping across a shoulder blade . . .
Peace . . .
Today clamor, scurry, pressure . . .
Today people . . .
Bobo snatched off jenny’s glasses and bit them in two. One of Mr. Coulis’s helpers tried to grab him, but he flung her away, snarling. Mr. Coulis himself came hurrying but stopped when Bobo lurched at him with his hair bushed out under his cowboy shirt—a male chimp’s bite is a serious wound. Realizing his advantage but already scared of what he’d done, Bobo looked for an escape. Up, his instincts told him. He leaped for a nearby lighting tower. The technician at the top felt the tower shake and shouted, then looked over and saw Bobo swarming up. He scuttered down the ladder on the far side. Bobo reached the platform and turned, barking his anger. When he shook the guardrail the whole tower rattled and quivered and two loose lights fell off, their bulbs exploding when they hit the ground. The noise excited him further. Everyone was yelling now. Mr. Coulis had started to climb the ladder, but Bobo saw him coming and slung a screwdriver at him, hitting him on the cheek. He scrambled down with blood beginning to stream onto his shirt. Bobo tried to wrench a fixed light off the rail.
Mimi began to screech. She was a shaper director, quite well known for her pictures and even better known for her extravagance and tantrums. She was a short, square, yellow-faced woman who always wore red-and-black outfits with chunky necklaces and bangles. In a tantrum she threw her arms about so that the bangles clashed out of key with her screeches. Mr. Coulis tried to placate her with little bobs and shrugs while he dabbed at his cheek with a bloody handkerchief. It wasn’t his fault. The script had called for a big chimp, and that meant a male. Bobo hadn’t done commercials before, but he’d always been fairly easygoing and less unpredictable than the other males. And so on. Mimi paid no attention.
The four trained chimps—Jenny, Belinda, Olo, Nin—watched both exhibitions with wariness. They probably found the human quarrel more frightening. To see a male chimp in a rage was an everyday thing for them, but to see humans making the same kind of noises, giving the same kind of signals, especially to Mr. Coulis, whom they’d been trained to regard as dominant—that was new and alarming. Humans had immense and magical powers. What mightn’t one of them do in a tantrum?
Eva also watched, but with increasing exasperation. She hated these sessions anyway, but it was in the contract so she had to do them. In a minute or two Mr. Coulis would have to lay Bobo out with his stun gun, and that would mean no more filming today and trying again tomorrow. Tomorrow she wanted to go back to the Reserve. After that it would be at least two weeks before she got another chance to spend time with Lana, to sit in the sun and groom and be groomed and watch Wang learning the rules of the concrete grove. Eva’s diary was full for three days after that, and then for the next ten she’d be in estrus. This happened once every thirty-five days—your sex parts on your rump swelled up and became tender and the males got excited about you. There were pills Eva could have used to suppress it, but they made her feel sick and low. Being in estrus didn’t bother Eva herself much—far less than she’d expected—and the males at the Reserve wouldn’t have done anything unless she’d let them, but they’d have hung around and begged, and she’d have felt she was making a difference between herself and the other females by shooing them off—and anyway, Mom wouldn’t have dreamed of letting her go to the Reserve like that. By the time estrus was over it would be school again.
Of course she understood why Bobo was upset. Partly it was the lights and Mimi’s beads and the scurry of humans trying to get things done under pressure, but mainly it was something else. Bobo was a young adult male. In his Public Section there were three males older and stronger than him, but here he might have been boss over the five females, given the chance. But there was Mr. Coulis here, and all these other humans, and besides he’d lived most of his life in Research, and now in a Public Area, both of which were even less natural than the Reserve. He didn’t know where to begin. His solution was the usual male one—he threw a tantrum.
“I’m on the big fellow’s side, myself,” said a man’s voice close by.
“I don’t care. I want my coffee break,” said a woman.
Eva sat by herself between takes, not just because there was a chair marked EVA but because anything else was impossible. She was too conscious of her difference from the other chimps to stay with them—in this world they were chimps but she was people—but she didn’t feel like talking to people either. Her only thought was to get the whole thing over with and go away. Now she merely glanced sideways and saw the couple, a pretty woman with a bored face and a plump young man with a pale gold beard. He noticed Eva’s glance and smiled.
“How about you, miss?” he said.
Eva grunted, a no-meaning sound.
“It’s just against reason and nature,” said the man, still speaking to Eva. “Bringing a noble beast like that into this kind of crappy setup and getting him to do anything we fancy, such as being dressed up for laughs in a cowboy outfit. It makes me sick.”