Eva

Eva by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online Page A

Book: Eva by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online
Authors: Peter Dickinson
own daughter, the one with the long black hair and blue eyes and the scar on her left earlobe where a chimp had bitten her when she was three. However much she taught herself to think of this new Eva as that daughter, it wasn’t the same as feeling she was.
    It was unfair to push her too hard. Eva stopped grooming Mom’s hair and took her hand and held it, human-style. Mom squeezed back but let go. Eva’s was not the hand she needed, not any longer. It was long and bony-fingered with hair on the back. How could anyone pretend it was her daughter’s?
    And, Eva knew, Mom was trying harder than anyone else would, ever.

MONTH TWO,
DAY TWENTY-FIVE

    Awake.
    Standing by the window, looking down, nerve ends electric . . .
    Like standing on a cliff top, imagining falling . . .
    Falling into the world, people, people, people . . .
    Having to move among them, to begin to live . . .

    “Big day,” said Robbo.
    Eva turned at the sound of his voice. He stood smiling at the door, handsome as a shaper cop. His skin glistened like a fresh nut. He was wearing a brand-new outfit, straight from the store, with fawn trousers molded to his legs and a loose fawn jacket above. He’d had his hair styled and his mustache trimmed. It was a big day for everyone.
    “I like the butterfly,” he said.
    “Mom couldn’t resist it.”
    It was gold-and-purple, stitched on to the left pocket of Eva’s new green overalls. She liked it too.
    “Let’s see you walk, then . . . You call that walking?”
    “You want me to do
tricks?

    She didn’t get the sneer quite right. Practicing when you were alone wasn’t the same as talking, and she still made mistakes. Robbo was used to it and hardly noticed, but from today on it mattered. People judge other people by their voices. If you sound stupid, you are stupid. If you don’t sound real, you aren’t—you’re not a person.
    “I’ve seen chimps walking,” said Robbo. “Of their own accord.”
    “When they’ve got something to carry. Like I’ve seen humans crawling.”
    “Okay, okay, walk how you want. Let’s go and look at this gym, huh? They’ve just about gotten it finished in time.”
    He turned and held the door for Eva as if going through it was the most ordinary thing you could think of. Last evening, while Dad and Joan and Ali and Meg and the rest of the team had stood around, Dr. Richter had ceremonially removed the last pair of sensor cables that tied her to the machines. Champagne corks had popped. Everyone had wished her good luck. And today she was free. Going through the door was like being hatched, coming out of her safe egg into the huge world.
    The world was a shambles. First there was a little empty vestibule and beyond that the control room, where new machines were being uncrated; technicians were arguing over a wiring diagram; a supervisor was frowning at a printout. Eva knuckled through the mess beside Robbo and out into a wide hospital corridor. She was glad now of the boring exercises he and the physios had made her do all the last seven weeks. She felt none of the tiredness and heaviness you’d have expected after all that time in bed—in fact, an exhilarating lightness filled her, becoming stronger and stronger until she lost control and went scampering on ahead, hooting with pleasure as she ran.
    Then she stopped dead, with all the hairs along her back prickling erect. Her call had been answered, not with the same call but with a series of short breathy barks on a slightly rising note snapped off into silence. A chimp call. Eva had never heard it before, but she knew, or rather she felt, what it meant.
Alone
, it said.
Lost. Frightened. Where are you?
She felt the answer rising in her throat but suppressed it as Robbo caught up with her.
    “Who’s that?” she said.
    “Who’s what?”
    The call began again while Eva was still pressing keys.
Alone. Lost
. . .
    “That, you mean?” said Robbo. “Next patient, I guess. Now that Prof. Pradesh has proved she

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