Eva by Peter Dickinson

Author:Peter Dickinson
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780375892134
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2008-12-09T05:00:00+00:00

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.

Eva peered out to see if Lana was all right and found Lana, Beth, Dinks, and another female grouped at the bottom of the iron tree and screaming up at the male. Eva went over and joined the racket. It was extremely satisfying, having a big male cornered like that and telling him to come down if he dared. With another part of her mind she worked out what had happened, though to the real chimps it was all so ordinary they had no need to think about it.

Dad had told Eva the setup before she’d first joined, and part of her “work” for him—her excuse for being at the Reserve—was keeping him up-to-date with the latest moves. Beth’s little “family”—Dad called it a subgroup—was part of a larger group that contained two adult males. Tatters, the one up the tree now, was the stronger, but Geronimo was older and had been boss of the group for several years while Tatters was still growing up.

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