Eva by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

it’s too long to explain. Anyway, they’re going to do this program and some more after, perhaps, and they’ve spent so much money on you that they’re bound to want to make a production of it, and ...”
    “Do I have to?”
    “Well, yes, at least one. That’s in the contract. After that . . . You see,
if
people are interested in you, enough of them, then that’s going to mean more programs, and that’s going to mean money coming in, not just for you and Dad and me—I mean it’d be nice, but we don’t really . . . You see, we actually
owe
Joan, morally I mean, for what she’s done. Then there’s the Pool ...”
    Mom sighed. The Pool was always desperate for funds. It was a fact that Eva had grown up with, almost like the law of gravity.
    “Okay,” she said. “If it’s for the Pool.”
    “I knew you’d say that.”
    “Provided they don’t try and make out I’m some kind of freak.”
    A pause. Mom sort of squaring her shoulders, inside.
    “There’s bound to be a bit of that, darling. I mean, we’ve got to get used to the idea that people are going to stare. Some people. I suppose in the long run it’s going to be up to you to show them you’re not.”
    In her skiing fantasy Eva had imagined the gawps of the other skiers as she careered down the slopes. And school—of course heads would turn when she first came into class, but kids get used to things pretty quickly. She hadn’t really thought about living her life as the object of an endless stare. People!
    No, you didn’t have to have people, not all the time.
    “Okay,” she said. “And when it gets to be too much, I can always go and join the Pool and be a chimp for a while.”
    She felt Mom’s body stiffen beneath her, as if she’d gotten a cramp. Eva thought she’d just been keeping the conversation going, but now . . . yes, better get it said. It was important.
    “It’s all right, Mom. I’ll only go to the Reserve.”
    “Are you serious?”
    “Mind you, if I went to a Public Section, people wouldn’t know which one was me. I’d have to take my clothes off, of course.”
    “
Please
, darling ...”
    “It’s all right, Mom.”
    “Let’s talk about something else.”
    That was family code, just like a chimp code, only in words—a way of not getting into an argument. You chose another subject and hoped the argument would simply go away, like a headache—only this one, Eva knew, wasn’t going to, but for now she obeyed the code.
    “What about clothes, then?” she said.
    “Yes, we’ve got to work that out. Have you got any ideas?”
    “Bow in my hair?”
    Mom managed a laugh. She’d always loved making clothes for her pretty daughter. The chimps in the Pool mostly wore nothing but were dressed in child’s overalls when Dad took them on expeditions, partly because they weren’t housebroken and had to use diapers, but mainly to hide the sexual swellings on the rumps of the females, which people who didn’t know about chimps always found embarrassing.
    “I’m a different shape now,” said Eva.
    “A challenge, darling. I’ll bring my tape measure tomorrow.”
    “Nothing fancy, Mom. I hate it in the commercials when they put chimps into frills. Just overalls, mostly.”
    “I suppose so.”
    “I’m not going to try and look human.”
    Silence, but Eva could feel the sigh.
    “It’s important, Mom. I’ve got to be happy with this new me, and so do you. Not just think it’s better than me being dead. Happy to have me like this.”
    “I’m trying, darling. I really am trying.”
    Poor Mom. It was much harder for her. When you’re born you get imprinted with your mother’s face, and she with yours. It happens with a lot of animals, some more strongly than others. With humans it’s about middling, but the bond is still there, deep inside you, hard to alter. Eva still had the same Mom she’d always known, but Mom had this new thing, this stranger, this changeling. She couldn’t help yearning in her depths for her