“Howler monkey,” he said. “Jungle should be full of that noise, but they got their figures wrong when they set it all up. The howler population’s gone down and down. They’re not going to survive. So there’s room for a new big ape in Cayamoro.”
Eva understood at once what he was talking about. She was surprised. Surely he’d learned enough by now.
“We wouldn’t survive either,” she said. “It’s been tried.”
“No, it hasn’t. Not what I’ve in mind.”
“Have you told Dad? First time we met, I said ask him.”
“Said as much as I could, short of getting slung out of the door. Not a good listener, your dad. You’ve got to remember he’s got a whole lot of his life tied up in the Pool. One thing I’ve learned is we’re going to have a tougher time educating humans than we are educating chimps.”
“It’s been tried.”
“Sure—I’ve read the literature, Stella Brewer, for instance, great girl, trying to teach chimps how to live in the wild after they’d been used for learning experiments, lived in houses, worn clothes, eaten off plates.”
“I thought some of hers were wild.”
“Yeah. Brought in as babies by poachers, and some of them she won with, too—just a few. None of that matters. All I know is we’ve got to try again. We can’t go on as we are. You’ve been born with the Pool, Eva, grown up with it. It’s an always-there thing for you. But it isn’t. The way things are going, in twenty years’ time the Pool will be finished.”
“Uh!”
“I’ve seen the figures. To you, being short of funds is just another always-there thing, but it’s been getting worse. There’s a trend. It started long before you were born. I’m not just talking about the Pool and I’m not just talking about money. It’s happening all over. The whole human race is thinking in shorter and shorter terms. The bright kids aren’t going into research; the investors aren’t putting their money into anything that doesn’t give them a quick return; governments and institutions aren’t funding basic research; we’re pulling back from space exploration—you name it, we’re doing it. We’re giving up. Packing it in.”
“Uh?”
“Trouble with us humans is we keep forgetting we’re animals. You know what happens when an animal population expands beyond what the setup will bear? Nature finds ways of cutting them back. Usually it’s plain starvation, but even when there’s food to go around something gets triggered inside them. They stop breeding or they eat their own babies or peck one another to death—there’s all sorts of ways. Us too. It’s in us. We can’t escape it. A lot of it’s been going on already for years without anyone noticing, a sort of retreat, a backing out, nine-tenths of the world’s population holed up in their apartments twenty-four hours a day watching the shaper. But it’s starting to move. I can feel it. There’s a real crash coming, and us being humans, whatever it is, we’re going to overdo it. You know what that means for you chimps? Lana’s children, or her children’s children, are going to have to fend for themselves. You think they’ll make it out there?”
He flicked his head toward the endless vista of high rises, veiled in their human haze.
“Not a hope,” he said. “They’ve got to be somewhere where there’s trees to shelter them, leaves that come and come, fruit all year round, small game—the life they were made for.”
“They’ve forgotten.”
“They’ll have to learn all over . . . No, listen . . .”
He had gripped her hand as she stretched it over the keyboard.
“. . . there’s chances now. There’s something new, something Brewer and the others didn’t have. When they tried to teach chimps how to live wild, they had one big problem—they were human. They couldn’t lead, they could only push—push the chimps out into a world where humans didn’t fit. It makes your heart bleed, how they tried, the things they gave up. But you could lead, Eva.”
“Uh!”
“You and the others. Stefan’s due to wake up, any day now.”
“Uh?”
“Chimp used to be called Caesar. Yasha’s a month behind. Then there’ll be three of you.”
Eva had not asked about Caesar since the night of her tantrum, and Mom and Dad hadn’t mentioned him either, though Mom was probably hoping that when Joan’s other patients began to awaken, to become available for company, then Eva would stop wanting to spend so much time at the Reserve. Eva wasn’t sure what she felt about this. Some ways it would be good to know chimps who could also talk—bitch about friends, discuss music, tease, plan lives—but she had now discovered other kinds of talk, in glance and gesture and especially touch, that gave her everything she needed.
“What do you think you’re for?” said Grog.
“Uh?”
“Yeah. What are you for, Eva? What’s your purpose? Are you just a freak? Are you just here so Professor Pradesh can prove things about neuron memory? ’Course, that’s why the old girl chimped you, but do you reckon it’s enough? Are you happy with just that? Being a scientific curiosity and selling drinks on the shaper? Listen. Your dad and the people who helped chimp you did it for their own reasons, and your mom said yes to save your life. They didn’t know the real reason. The real reason was that you and Stefan and the others are the ones who are going to show the chimps how to survive. Nature doesn’t like letting species go. She’s going to save the chimps if she can, and that’s why she let you happen.”
Eva stared. She would hardly have known him. He stood in the brilliant morning light with the shaper jungle behind him, hunched, pop-eyed, quivering with the energies of his argument. She fluttered her fingers across the keys to tell him he was crazy. His whole idea was doubly impossible. You couldn’t teach chimps to live on their own, not any longer. You couldn’t persuade people to let you try. But try to tell Grog that. He simply wouldn’t understand. He was like his mother in one of her rages, an unstoppable force, blind with his passion. She canceled the words and just grunted doubt.
“Yeah,” he said. “It’ll take a bit of thinking about. Don’t expect you to give me a yes right off. It’s a long-term project—five years minimum. We’ve got to make a whole world see reason. They will in the end—they’ve got no other choice. But for you, Eva, do you want this ...”
He waved a hand at the green compelling jungle.
“. . . or this?”
He pressed keys. The jungle whipped away and the restaurant was filled with ruins, part of a dead city under gray moonlight with gray and grassless hills rimming the horizon—not real, part of a set for some shaper epic probably, but eerie, not just because of the sense of ghostliness and loss but because of the way the tables and chairs stood among the broken walls and rubble-littered floors, waiting and waiting for guests who would never come.
“Time to go,” said Grog. “Got to keep on my mother’s good side—we’re going to need her.”
MONTH EIGHT,
DAY TWENTY-NINE
Living with the dream . . .
Imaginary trees filling the iron grove . . .
Shadows, leaf litter, looping creepers, the flash of a bird . . .
Calls, whispers, odors . . .
A card had come from Grog that morning, saying he was staying a week longer because he’d picked up some kind of jungle bug, but the picture of Cayamoro was more beautiful than anything she’d ever seen. So now as she played with Abel she did so absentmindedly, making imaginary scenarios of escape not just for herself but for Lana and Beth and the rest of them—putting something in their food that would send them all to sleep, and flying them south and then letting them wake, amazed, among the odors and shadows they were made for . . .
A shriek! Lana! Another! Eva scuttled around the corner of the concrete slab against which she’d been leaning. Lana was lying flat on her face on the ground with a male chimp jumping on her. Beth and Dinks were watching, shrieking too, with all their teeth showing, outraged but too scared to help. Wang was actually under Lana, squealing each time the weight of the male came down. The male had his back to Eva. She flung herself at him, leaping at the last instant to crash into his spine while he was actually in the middle of a jump. He probably weighed twice what she did, but he wasn’t ready and she knocked him flat on his face, then raced on around the corner of the concrete slab, and the next corner too. There was just a chance he hadn’t even seen her and wouldn’t know what had happened. The shrieks on the other side of the slab became deafening. The male appeared, actually above her head, half crouching on the slab, screaming back at the females on the other side. Eva bit him on the ankle as hard as she could. He raced away, swung himself up the nearest iron tree, and clung there, shrieking. It had all happened in about fifteen seconds.