Human

by Hayley Camille

  “But, humans are not immune to natural selection,” she said quickly. “Brain size can shrink. Diet, gestational period, social system, predators – all affect the physiology of an animal over time. These evolutionary forces should act just as readily on the human species as any other mammals; we are, after all, just another animal and part of a complex ecosystem.” She'd kept them long enough.

  “As far as Homo floresiensis is concerned, the jury's still out. So do your readings, there are a few articles coming up in the next few weeks about this very topic and I want some good debates happening in this room about it.” Ivy flicked through the loose leaf folder she pulled out of her bag. “Start with Morwood, Sutikna, Tocheri, Lentfer and Brown. We'll discuss them first up next week.” The references were scribbled down as everyone packed up and started filing to the door, looking much more inspired than when they'd arrived.

  Ivy trailed after them into the hallway.

  “This may be the most important palaeo-anthropological discovery in the last fifty years guys,” she had called after them, “and it really challenges our understanding of what it means to be human!”

  The irony of Ivy’s current situation was much more painful than her injury.

  They were an evolutionary dream; Ivy’s dream. Living, breathing fossils, now leading her through the vegetation like a trail of deadly ants.

  The hobbits, their fossils had been dubbed by sensationalist media. Hobbits. Strangely, it suited them.

  The hominids she followed wore only a utilitarian belt made of straps and folds of animal hide which seemed identical on both men and women. Aside from that, they were completely naked and unashamedly so. Ivy revelled in their unique physiology as they moved.

  They were muscular and powerful and slightly pot-bellied, and Ivy guessed they would be of a similar body weight to Kyah. The tallest was barely over a meter high. Their legs were short relative to their height but they walked with quite long strides regardless. Unusually long, flat feet extended each stride and caused their knees to bend slightly further backward than Ivy’s own with each step, giving them an unusual gait. The hobbits seemed flexible and stable and they navigated the forest tangles with ease and familiarity.

  The woman beside her directed Ivy through a fall of rocks in the undergrowth. Her shoulder blades were shrugged forward giving a slightly tight appearance. Ivy knew that anatomically, her collarbones were relatively short as well, compensating for the potential limitation of manual dexterity either characteristic would offer alone.

  Ivy bent forward, using the largest rock to support her throbbing leg. Her palm slipped on wet moss and she skidded down, falling hard. The hobbit woman lunged toward her.

  “No!” Ivy yelled, terrified. She scrambled to her feet as the woman stepped back, frowning. The hobbit bent down and reclaimed the spear she’d dropped to help Ivy.

  “Oh. Sorry,” Ivy muttered. The woman frowned, tilting her head to the side. Her eyes narrowed at the blood stains on the bottom of Ivy’s jeans. She gestured for Ivy to keep walking.

  The hobbit’s arms reached almost to her knees and were lithely muscled. Despite her size advantage, Ivy knew she was no match for the woman’s strength. Or spear. She recalled articles suggesting that these unique forearms may be reminiscent of a more aboreal lifestyle.

  It wasn't long before Ivy discovered they were right.

  “Shirakan! Shirakan!” A yell went up from the front of line and the first four hobbits leapt backwards. They split from the group, scattering to the closest tree trunks and pulling themselves upward. Not only were their long, muscular forearms faultless for the task, but Ivy knew the slightly curved bones of their fingers and toes would aid them in tree-climbing as well. For a split-second, their movements seemed unprovoked. All of the hobbits, as well as Kyah were now stowed high in the branches. Ivy jumped back yelling, finally seeing what the others had sensed much quicker. A lizard of gigantic proportions lumbered forward, eyeing her coldly. Its long, yellow deeply forked tongue flicked and tasted the air. Komodo dragon.

  Ivy froze with cold fear. She was the only one left in its path. The reptile was nearly nine feet long. A row of serrated inch-long teeth were coated in swathes of its own blood-tinged saliva in anticipation of feeding.

  Thunk! A spear from above found its mark on the hind quarters of the dragon. Thunk! Ivy bolted, clawing up the tree closest to her, shoes slipping and sliding on the bark as she tried to catch grip. Behind her the great lizard charged, faster than its size should allow.

  The Komodo dragon was nearly fully grown, with loosely articulated jaws and an expandable stomach. It looked easily capable of swallowing a hobbit whole. But Ivy was considerably larger. She’d heard the horror stories of tourists caught off guard.

  Great chunks of flesh and bone torn away-

  I can’t grip!

  The rest of the body rammed against a tree-

  Slipping! My ankle, agony.

  Forced down its throat head first-

  Rasping! Hissing! Too close!

  Thunk! Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

  More spears pierced the Komodo as it charged behind her. Ivy screamed, struggling to climb as high as the others. With unprecedented strength, four tiny hands reached down and grabbed hold of her shirt and bag from above, wrenching her up into the branches. Furious, the Komodo bore forward at the base of tree. It lurched up onto its hind legs, using its massive tail to stabilise its efforts to reach her. Its teeth scraped the sole of her shoe.

  Thunk! Thunk! Thunk!

  A spear found the exposed chest of the lizard. It fell away. Before Ivy had stopped shaking enough to climb down, a handful of hunters had sliced the dragon’s throat cleanly, whispering words Ivy didn’t know. Then they retrieved sharp stone flakes from the folds of their waist hides, and quartered and drained the animal, lifting the heavy carcass onto their shoulders with apparent ease. Within minutes the hobbits were continuing on their way. The predator had become prey.

  Every so often, the hunters would glance back to Ivy nervously. Only the old man seemed untroubled by her presence. He kept pace with Ivy, eyeing her limp critically and occasionally even offering encouraging noises but made no effort to talk to her again. Ivy's ankle throbbed as she struggled through the web of undergrowth, impeding their progress. Finally, the band descended onto yellow grassland spiked with low shrubs. The roar of insects and birds was replaced by the sound of gushing water. A hot breeze whipped her hair across her face and Ivy recognized the wide river she had spotted from high above. Desperation for a cold bath and deep drink suddenly hit her and she gestured to the old man, but was quickly pushed toward the hillside by a prodding spear.

  Liang Bua Cave.

  Ivy almost laughed out loud at the irony of it. Earlier, from far above in her despair on the ridge, then obscured by trees and tears, she couldn’t have seen the classic stretched mouth and the raised lip of its entrance that she knew from a million photos. It was a geological anomaly – a gift from the gods to archaeologists that allowed sediments to slowly build over millennia, trapping artefacts and bones inside like a beautifully layered cake. In this context it was obvious. It cemented Ivy’s understanding, and left no doubt of where she was. Her heart raced.

  The drier grass gave way once more to damp forest as the small valley turned upward. Ivy picked up her feet self consciously, her footfalls and stumbles elephantine compared to the small silent bodies ascending around her.

  The dark cave mouth was a gaping eye in the mountainside. A knot twisted in her gut. What could they possibly want with me? Were there people here with them? Scientists? Surely they’d been seen by now if they’d re-claimed the site. Kyah climbed into her arms, uneasy at the dark, confined space ahead. Ivy chanced a look to the old man staring from beside her into the cavern. He called into the cave mouth and then pulled her inside.

  For a fleeting moment, Ivy's eyes were blind in the sudden darkness. A gush of cool air licked her face as movement swirled nearby. Then darkness resolved
into shades of brown and grey. Hidden shapes were defined and took meaning. Ivy stood in the entrance, frozen with fear and delight.

  A massive subterranean chamber rose imperiously in a great arc above her, one hundred feet high and descending far back into the dim light. The ceiling was crowded with long stalactites; petrified minerals dripping like ancient candle wax from every conceivable space. They pointed sharp and foreboding into the great open cavern. Half-crumbled boulders crept down from the wall edges to a dirt floor rutted with rocks. The cool air tasted like damp earth on her tongue – musty, organic and suffused with jasmine flower. There were no scientists here. No help.

  Dwarfed in their stone fortress, a hundred olive-skinned humans closed in upon her, alive with animated whispers. Not a single one stood higher than her chest. Some held the hands of adolescent children so small they would have seemed infantile were it not for the comprehension in their faces. The old man raised his arms and greeted them in a hushed voice. Then he stepped away, leaving Ivy exposed.

  An explosion of voices broke out. Ivy was pushed deep through the crowd into the cave, clutching Kyah in her trembling arms. Spears and hands reached up to graze her skin as she stumbled forward. Small pitted fires scattered the earthen floor. Drawing close to the largest flames, the old man gestured to the dirt. Intimately aware of the presence of spears that had slain a much fiercer opponent than she already, Ivy complied, hugging Kyah tight in her lap. The bonobo’s head twitched convulsively and she picked at her scarred chest, her eyes darting, shoulders hunched. Ivy ran her fingers through Kyah’s matted black hair, shushing and comforting her.

  If these people wanted me dead, surely they would have killed me by now.

  “Right, what’s the craic?” Orrin tried to sound buoyant as he strode into the lab, an enthusiastic smile masking his frustration. His stormy mood had only worsened yesterday after Ivy's disappearance. Accelerated by the lack of progress in sourcing their hardware malfunctions, he'd given up early and left them to it.

  Dale and Phil clicked studiously under a wall of flat-screened monitors. Phil raised his eyebrow.

  “We're still working on it,” Phil said. “The systems were stuffed up pretty badly.”

  Dale fidgeted in his chair and shifted closer to the screen. He seemed unwilling to meet Orrin's eyes.

  Jaysus, I must have been a complete gobshite yesterday. Dale's intense nervousness tended to increase with Orrin's bad mood. As did his habit of screwing things up. Dale was a good student, extremely intelligent and dedicated, albeit massively under confident. So dedicated that he'd transferred universities, along with Phil, so he could continue his research under Orrin’s supervision. Dale’s expertise in creating the mechanical components of their experiments made him indispensable. More than that though, Phil and Dale were Orrin’s friends.

  Orrin whistled casually and dumped a box of doughnuts on the desk between them.

  “Got you lads a couple of lattes. Sorry about yesterday.”

  Phil appraised the lattes, then grabbed a doughnut.

  “Whatever,” he said. “We can't all be as smooth with the ladies as the Phil-meister.” He swallowed half a doughnut without chewing, waggling his eyebrows.

  “Fair play to you, man.” Orrin laughed, again resisting his rising frustration at the thought. Phil was an eternal bachelor that never-the-less seemed to have a constant flow of adoring women calling in on him.

  Dale's shoulders relaxed and he smiled, reaching for a coffee.

  Orrin sat down. “So what's the story?”

  Dale finally spoke. “We've been recalibrating the measurement software. It's all back up and running now. There were some pretty intense readings recorded yesterday. Most of them cut out automatically but we've got data backups.”

  “Thanks to you Dale,” said Orrin.

  Dale reddened under the praise and took a swig of coffee.

  “Take me through it,” Orrin said.

  “Firstly, look at these diffraction patterns,” said Phil. He scooted his chair across the room, stopping expertly in front of a wide monitor. Green and red graphs scattered the screen. “Yesterday, about six pm, the laser system went ballistic. We've got sensor readings suggesting a period of extreme wavelength changes, short, constant fluctuations for about 30 seconds, then wavelength irregularity for another few minutes. The light intensity patterns too, totally haywire.” Phil pointed to a flashing graph. “There must have been a serious light show in here.”

  Orrin glanced around the room. A series of diode lasers were wired at regular intervals around the centre space ceiling. Rotary motion sensors held them in place, unobtrusively gathering background energy fluctuations. They looked undisturbed.

  “We were in the office at the time, I'm telling you, there was no light malfunction,” Dale interjected. It seemed as if he and Phil had had this argument before.

  “The door was shut, remember?” Orrin said. “We wouldn’t have seen it if there was. What else Phil?” Phil's speciality lay in coding analysis programs to measure environmental variables. He knew his stuff.

  “Okay, look at the general systems,” said Phil. He rolled back across the room and the others followed on foot. “Temp, increased by about 15 degrees, then straight back down to normal. That could explain why we had some shut-downs.” His index finger tapped a blue graph. “Relative humidity went up 50% in 15 seconds. Like a greenhouse.”

  Orrin glanced around at the rack of plants on the wall, kept there for experimental response measurements. They looked greener, more vibrant. Can’t be, he decided. He rubbed his fingers into his eyes.

  “Gauge pressure – dropped,” continued Phil. “Even the pH of our fertilisers increased.”

  Orrin glanced again at the plants. Next to them, a slick laptop collected real time changes in physiological response. Tiny wires were prodded into the soil and clipped to leaves. Jars of shaded liquid below sported metal measurement rods.

  “Did you check the plants?” Orrin asked.

  “Yeah man, respiration rates went right up and have been higher than average since then. I think they liked it. This is some crazy shit….” Dale and Orrin shadowed Phil as he moved between monitors, typing quickly.

  “Sound sensor - off the scale,” Phil continued with his back to the others. “I'm not just talking loud; I’m talking high range frequency, upwards of 80,000 Hertz. That's where we lost it. A god-damn dog couldn't even hear that. And it's localised in this room, the outer sensors didn't pick it up.” He scooted to the next monitor, reaching for another doughnut.

  “And here's the piece de resistance.” Bent over the keyboard, a series of brightly coloured graphs appeared, and then flicked to the wide flat screen overhead for added effect. “Check that out.” Phil sat back in his chair and fell silent.

  Orrin caught his breath. To his trained eye, the whips and plateaus of the giant graphs told a bizarre tale. The electromagnetic fields in the room coursed and waned, increasing to dizzying levels, the axial and radial fields were both volatile and unnatural. It was unlike anything he had ever seen. Along the base, the earth's natural magnetic field held a steady reference, increasing only slightly in the centre.

  “Holy Mary and babby Jesus,” Orrin breathed.

  Even Phil, who had uncovered the devastating anomaly, was speechless.

  Ivy sat, clutching Kyah in her lap. She was surrounded. Whispers echoed off the cave walls and pierced her like arrows.

  The oldest man, who had led her to the cave, broke purposefully through the crowd. He reached out and tugged at Ivy’s arm encircling Kyah. His fingers were thin and felt slightly curved in the bone. It felt familiar. Kyah’s fingers, though more pronounced, had the same curve.

  Ivy let him pull her hand toward his own chest where a black stone hung from a leather strip around his neck. The old man pushed her fingers onto the amulet, her amulet. Ivy felt its peculiar warmth against her fingertips.

  “That’s mine,” she breathed.

  “Yes.”
/>   Ivy jerked her hand back, eyes wide. What the hell? The words that came from his mouth were unrecognisable, but their meaning was loud and clear. He spoke to me. Inside my head.

  Ivy scrunched her fingers deep into Kyah’s hair, squeezing her eyes shut tight. No! No no no! I did that. It was me. Ivy opened her eyes. She took a deep breath, then another. You’re braver than this. She gritted her teeth, took another deep breath and reached for the amulet again.

  “Welcome, Hiranah.”

  Ivy scrambled to her feet, hauling Kyah up with her. This is insane! She spun around, trying to find an escape route. There are too many! Most had weapons. She hugged Kyah closer.

  The man reached up to her, and pulled her fingers back to the amulet with surprising force.

  “You can’t leave,” he said.

  “Why?” She whispered. Her voice cracked from lack of use.

  “Because we need you,” he replied.

  A wave of goosebumps prickled her skin. His words out-loud, in that foreign, whispered tongue, were harsh and truncated, but those in Ivy’s mind seemed whole. Like a repaired translation.

  Ivy struggled to remain calm. The man held her hand tightly against the stone. How? How can I hear you? There were no words this time, only a desperate thought.

  “The stone speaks for us,” he answered.

  “How?” Ivy said aloud.

  “I don't know.”

  “Well I need to know!” Ivy yelled. She could feel the tingling of adrenaline racing through her blood. Even her fingertips twitched.

  The old man frowned. “Then you must find the answer yourself.”