Human (29 page)

“Nothing!” The remaining boy exclaimed, sitting straighter, with tears in his eyes. “Terap was teaching us how to make bird traps. We were nowhere near karathah territory! They just appeared and began casting arrows before we even knew they were there.” Kari’s mouth became a straight line and he blinked repeatedly, forcing away his tears. Lahstri nodded, indicating for Kiran’s father to carry the now unconscious boy back to her own hearth to tend. “It is best if I do it now, while he can’t feel it.”

A small group fell into grief beside Terap’s body. From behind them, an old man stepped around the body and walked directly to Ivy, who stood shocked, holding Trahg in her arms.

The man leant up close, twisting his mouth in a bitter grimace.

“Karathah.”

He spat at Ivy’s feet and walked away.

Sunglasses did nothing to hide the dark circles under his eyes. Orrin adjusted the rear-view mirror and sighed. Countless hours of insomnia had bled into vague and terrifying dreams and he had awoken near midday feeling hung-over without the benefit of a night on the tear. Orrin was rarely unnerved. This stuff - whatever was happening, unnerved him. So he threw down a few painkillers and drove.

He needed to speak to Ivy. The biology lab, this insane talk of 'hobbits' and then those creatures,
people
, locked there in Kyah's place…
Ivy, please know what's going on.
Everything seemed to hinge on her, on finding her, on restoring his sanity. There would be a logical explanation. Orrin was a scientist. A problem was merely a process of deductions, hypotheses and eliminating the theories that tested false. He needed some hypotheses to test. He needed
her
.

Orrin drove slowly, surveying the houses as he went until he recognised the old brick apartment block Ivy lived in. He slowed to a stop under a barren jacaranda. Its carpet of flowers was mulch beneath his shoes as he crossed the road. Strangely, a group of men were gathered on the front lawn, surveying Ivy’s building with tapes and plans. Bulldozers were parked on the grass, their wheels shadowed by torn trails of dirt.

Orrin bypassed the men, heading for the front door. He heard a shout behind him.

“Hey! You can't go in there.” The filthy man with half-rolled sleeves that had previously been pointing directions dashed across the lawn to Orrin as he turned.

Orrin plastered a smile onto his face. “Just visiting a friend of mine. It's all grand, she's expecting me.”

The man surveyed Orrin over his sunglasses and raised an eyebrow. “I highly doubt that.”

Orrin stiffened and lifted his chin slightly. “And who would you be to know that?”

The man seemed amused. “I'd be the owner of this building. This
vacant
building.”

“Vacant?” All other thoughts fled Orrin's mind. “It can't be. I came here just last week…”

“Well, unless your friend makes a habit of squatting in condemned apartment blocks, I'd say it's a pretty safe bet you didn't.” The man seemed to notice the fall in Orrin's shoulders and he shaved the edge of sarcasm from his voice. “Sorry to disappoint you mate, but all previous tenants moved out a month ago. Dunno how they managed to stay here that long to tell you the truth, the place is falling to bits.” A thick glove smeared dirt and perspiration across his brow.

Orrin looked again. The man was right. On closer inspection, the building was in a terrible state, neglected and derelict. His eyes drew unconsciously to a broken second level window.
Her window.
It was empty except for a fluttering scrap of yellow lace. He shook his head slowly. But he had been in that kitchen only last week. He had watched her play the cello, agonisingly beautiful and lost in her own notes. There were books and skulls and coffee and peeling daisy wallpaper.
And now it’s gone?
This made no sense.

“I swear she was here just last week,” Orrin muttered. It suddenly occurred to him that at least this man might know where to find her. “Wait, you're the owner you said? Her name is Ivy. Ivy Carter. Did she say where she was moving to?”

The man looked almost apologetic this time. “Can't help you, I dunno where any of the previous tenants have gone. Although I don't think there was an Ivy amongst them anyway. I've only owned it a week though.” He looked critically up at the building. “Been waiting for a while actually, I was hoping it would go on the market sooner, less work to do. Had my eye on it for years. Tom Chapman owned it, nice old bugger. Kind as you like, but not all there.” The man shook his head at the broken window. “Tom let this place go to rack and ruin in the end. I suppose he just couldn't keep up with the maintenance, although a few years back he used to try. Not the same though since his wife died. He was all alone for so long. Guess he just gave up.”

“What happened to him?” Orrin asked.

The man raised an eyebrow, seemingly surprised by the concern in Orrin’s voice. “Oh, he's still kicking. Got no family though, I think he's off to a nursing home. Pretty frail now, old Tom. A good bloke though, good bloke.” He clicked his tongue sadly and shook his head.

“So you're renovating?” Orrin asked. “Fixing up the digs then?”

“Nah, ‘fraid not. Too much work now. It'll have to come down.” He thumbed behind him to the bulldozer. “Going to put up some new apartments. Get a busload of uni students in, there's a good market for it here you know, being so close and all.”

“Of course…” Something indefinable tugged in his chest. Orrin stared at the building, willing Ivy to appear.

The man cleared his throat. “Good luck finding your friend.” He offered his hand.

“Sure. Thanks.”

Back at the car, he took a deep breath and let his eyes close, resting back against the hood.
Another black space.
Disappointment and desperation hit Orrin in waves. He'd been so sure he would find Ivy and force some logic into the insanity around him. Instead, he’d found a crumbling pile of bricks and an absence more disturbing than before. As the men continued working across the road, the building began to break apart. It looked soulless. Hollow. Even the garden beds had been choked of life by weeds.

Except those ones.
Hundreds of bright white flowers crowned the dismal entrance, catching the breeze. The daisies still had life.

Orrin eyed the rumbling bulldozers. Defeated again, he drove away.

The car park was packed when Orrin finally arrived at the university. Lunch had come and gone in the hours he’d spent drifting, unwilling to face another stretch of relentless testing with no answers. Phil and Dale would have noticed his absence; they were probably relieved. It was getting harder for Orrin to keep his temper in check with the abyss of frustrations opening up before him.
I’ll just have to try harder. Think harder.
He forced his unwilling mind into logic again.
The answer is always there; it's just waiting to be found.
Orrin got out of his car. As he walked he counted theories, pulling the stitches apart slowly, trying to find the original tear. Something had gone wrong. Whether in his mind, or in the real world, something had gone wrong and he had to find out what it was. Where
she
was. Orrin knew there would be no peace, no relief, until he did.

Deep in his bones Orrin felt the constant, dull ache of the only undeniable truth he could actually count on. Ivy really was gone. Even if no one else knew or cared, even if it was inconsequential to the rest of the world;
he
knew. She had disappeared entirely.

Orrin found himself at the university entrance where a line of city buses curved the roundabout. Students teamed into the doors like hourglass sand, encouraged by a raucous group in matching green shirts.
Another rally.

“Oppression!” they yelled.

“They’re slaughtering our brothers.”

“Damn the multi-nationals!”

“Who pays the price for genocide?”

“Human rights for Hobbits! Human Rights for
all
Humans!”

Hobbits again?
Orrin stared at the spectacle. At least three hundred students were crammed onto the buses. Green placards and banners were streaming from the windows. Orrin moved through the sea of backpacks, blue jeans and sunglasses. The buses began snaking away.

This animal was beyond anything he could have imagined.
But it’s real. I saw it.
The curiosity of that tiny baby,
staring
at him through eyes that weren't quite human, but so far from bestial, had haunted him all night. The defiant ferocity of its mother who had accused him without words. Her rage hadn’t been primal or instinctual, it seemed… intelligent. As if she knew what Orrin was capable of and hated him for it.

As the last bus pulled from the curve, Orrin leapt through the closing doors.

War cries erupted from the rioters as they pushed through the city streets, twenty astride and hundreds deep. They grew as they marched, gathering day trippers and workers, swelling past the stone shop fronts and impeding trams of angry commuters. Police watched the rebellion with wary eyes. They had come prepared.

Orrin thrilled in the pulsing human mass, searching for answers. The space around him ebbed and surged then grew hot and sweaty as the crowd thickened nearing their destination. Thumping music from somewhere in the crowd set a rythmn for the adrenaline surging through his veins. Orrin soaked up the intensity of the scene as if his life depended on it. Beside him, a bearded man grew hoarse as he yelled, waving his green placard. On the sidelines, people chanted and stamped, crushing the garden rockeries underfoot. The rioters were getting louder. Feet stumbled over each other and smaller bodies disappeared under the crowd. No one seemed to notice when they re-emerged covered in blood, dragged above the rising tide by police.

A man rushed his young daughter past, desperate to escape the mounting promise of violence. She held tight to his shoulders, wide-eyed at the spectacle. “Where are they going?” she mouthed.

Where
were
they going?
Orrin wondered. It had been far too loud for conversation on the bus, and the roar of the rioters was now overwhelming.

A monumental pile of blackened steel and concrete ahead answered his question. The crowd swelled around their destination like a single breathing organism. Shattered glass and twisted metal framing lay in great heaps across half the city block. Police tape kept the arson site clear from pedestrian violation, but the chanting crowd surged, tearing away the thin plastic strip. A cocktail of burnt chemicals filled Orrin’s nostrils and he could almost feel carcinogens finding a home inside his lungs.

“Freedom from oppression!” the crowd screamed.

“Basic civil rights to
hominid
-kind!”

“Murderers! Capitalists! Butchers!”

Canvas banners waved in the air. Gruesome images of hobbits were plastered across them, undoubtedly victims of experimental research. Metal electrodes protruded from uncovered brain matter with the desperate eyes of the victim still open and alive. Those holding the placards screamed their objections to the crowd. “Strapped down! Drugged! Beaten into submission!” The photos made Orrin's stomach turn. He pushed away, searching for space to breathe.