Human (36 page)

No one saw a chimp. There was no chimp. The chimp lab now housed some pitiful manifestation of man-ape that seemed to be the source of a cultural upheaval the likes of which he'd never seen before.
I'm missing something.
The world around him screamed
different
, like it had been tilted on its axis and everywhere he turned there was
wrong
that left him stumbling.

Orrin refilled his glass, slopping amber liquid on the table. His eyes squeezed shut as the bitterness ran down his throat.
Nothing.
He slumped against the stiff leather couch.

There wasn't a single damned thing that tied Ivy to this earth. If she had existed, there would be something- however small or remote. But there was nothing in her place but a black void. And only he seemed to notice. Mute devastation clawed at him, tempting insanity. Orrin had never questioned himself before, never needed to. Even in his darkest moments, in the broken realisation of divorce, he still knew his own mind. He'd trusted himself. But this, this was different. This obsession for a woman that had never existed, a woman who
couldn't
exist, was all consuming.

I need her.

He hadn't recognised the loneliness within him until it had almost been filled. Now, acknowledged for what it truly was, the black void Ivy left threatened to drown him. He searched desperately for something to fill the loss. The nothingness that took her space.

Black.

Orrin's vision blurred, eyelids drooping.
Black.

Black!

He jolted upright. The colour drained from his face. A memory pierced his brain with singular clarity.

Scattered stone tools in small plastic bags.

Jayne backed to a bench, with accusing, frightened eyes.

He'd slammed her desk.

A single stone tool under his hand.

The faint temptation of recognition.

Orrin knew now why it was familiar.

Black
, smooth beneath its crust of dirt. Evenly shaped. Unique.

He knew it. He'd seen it before.

It was Ivy's amulet.

The soles of Ivy's feet beat hard against the jungle floor as she ran through the bright tangle of roots, branches and ferns. Kyah shadowed her in the branches above. She was eternally grateful for her jogging routine in the last few years. Without it, Ivy doubted she’d have lasted half of the distance they’d just covered.

Leihna, Shahn’s younger sister, and her cousins Rinap and Filhia were like ghosts between the trees leaving only tinkling laughs filtering back to direct Ivy's course. Ivy guessed the two eldest to be about twelve with Filhia a couple of years behind. Their slender figures had not long come into womanhood but their faces still had the endearing glow of childhood.

They were like faeries in a children’s story, wisps that exist more in the moment before sleep is stolen, than in any kind of hopeful reality. Lurking megafauna could easily have made a meal of them, but the girls weren't defenceless. Their arms were muscular and strong and they could retreat to the safety of the branches in a split-second. In addition, each girl carried a stone blade in her belt and Rinap and Leihna carried spears.

Filhia crossed her path with a bright smile then melted back into the undergrowth. Ivy sprinted after her. The warm air filled her with intoxicating freedom. This place was special. Glossy, heart-shaped leaves touched her face. Twigged fingers swept through her hair and her toes thrilled in the feel of peat underfoot. Ivy danced through vines and pulled their limbs along her trail.

Ivy suddenly realised the irony of her fear on that first night in the forest. Claws nor tusks nor venom held the greatest threat here. Of all the predators in this forest, Homo sapiens were the most deadly. And not all death came from the end of a spear. She stopped abruptly. A spear was just the most obvious way to kill someone. But there were other ways as well.

“Aaargh!” Ivy shrieked as Rinap landed in front of her with a thump. The other girls pounced onto her from the undergrowth laughing. An instant later, Kyah had dropped from above too, hooting and swatting Ivy's hand playfully. Ivy held out her arms but Kyah signed “catch” and jumped back into the branches. Filhia, who had paid the most attention to Kyah's lessons, returned the sign with a giggle and obliged by chasing her upward.

“Where are we Leihna?” Ivy asked. She stepped over the buttressed feet of a tualang, stripping a handful of red seeds from a vine. Each seed had a glossy black spot on one end and they rattled together in her palm.
They'd make a nice necklace.
Ivy recognized the seed from her ill-fated expedition to the hot spring.

“This is the oleos grove,” Leihna said. The thick patch of trees they had stopped within was umbrella’d beneath higher branches creating a second canopy. Mint green leaves grew out of watermelon-coloured buds en masse, with the tips of fully grown leaves boasting a pink crown.

Ivy ran her fingers along a fallen mottled trunk. Insects had garnished the wood with a rusty coating of clay and misty patches of grey silk hid tiny spiders in its grooves.
Of course.
Oleos.
The tree had made it onto her phytolith reference chart.

“You use them for washing?” Ivy asked. “The fruit pulp makes a good soap.” Leihna looked surprised.

“That's right,” the girl said. “Also torches. We crush the nuts for oil and soak kapok fibres in it to wrap around a palm frond. They burn well.”

“Is that what we’re collecting for?” Ivy said.

Leihna grinned. “Not today. We have a surprise for you. You’re coming with us to the trade offering. But Phren wants us to gather oleos and durian first.”

“A trade offering?” Ivy’s smile was huge. The prospect of meeting more
Homo floresiensis
tribes was thrilling, not least because it could resolve some of her unanswered questions.

“We trade every half moon,” Leihna explained. “There!” She said pointing above her, “That’s the best spot to pick from.”

Ivy looked up. The base of each trunk was surrounded by a thorny tangle of vines, feet deep. There seemed no way to reach the clusters of pale green nuts hanging above. Beside her, Rinap stood with her head back surveying the heights. She suddenly seemed absurdly small.

“I'll go,” Rinap announced casually. The girl gripped her toes and fingers tightly on the rough bark of an adjacent dalunut palm and shimmied up. With a leap she was safely on the branch of the oleos tree, pulling sprays of berry nuts off the branches and throwing them onto Leihna’s head with a wicked laugh. Kyah and Filhia clambered across to join her, bombarding Ivy with handfuls of nuts as well.

Hit! Rain!
Kyah signed as she screeched, bouncing on the branch above Ivy. Ivy laughed and tossed a handful of them back up, hitting herself again in the face as gravity returned them. Kyah chortled and instigated a cascade of ripped leaves in retaliation.

With a shout, Leihna tossed a raffia bag up to Rinap and Filhia and before long; it was full, then another and then a third.

“We should take some dalunuts too, so Phren can make more tuak,” Rinap shouted down. Leihna agreed and left Ivy’s side to scoot up a palm, knocking the hard green cases down with sharp blows from her blade.

“What’s tuak?” Ivy asked.

“A drink,” Rinap cut in, landing beside them with a bag of oleos nuts. “The elders like it, especially Krue. The last time he drank so much he climbed a tree and fell asleep up there. Xiou had to pull him down.”

“He had a sore head the next day too,” added Filhia, rolling her eyes as she dropped down beside Ivy.

“He deserved it,” Rinap muttered, ignoring a shove from her younger sister.

A prehistoric hangover.
Ivy chuckled ruefully, trying to imagine the ill-tempered old man drunk up a tree.
I guess that's another shared trait for humanity.

“Let’s go,” Rinap said. “We still need to pick durian before the trade and I want to be home before sunset.”

“You just want to see Kari before sleeping!” Filhia teased.

The older girls burst into a fit of giggles.

“Maybe I do,” said Rinap, sparkling with mischief. “If he wants to be my mate, shouldn’t I make sure he’s up to the job?”

“You tease him too much.” Filhia pouted. “He'll get trampled by a probech trying to impress you!”

“I don’t tease him,” Rinap’s wide eyes feigned innocence, “I just test him a bit, that’s all. Anyway, Kari
should
try to impress me. You just wish you had someone to visit before sleeping!”

The youngest girl scowled indignantly. “Perhaps I will soon, you don’t know who I’m watching.” Rinap and Leihna looked at each other, surprised, then lapsed into laughter.

“Well, now we’ll both watch you to find out!” Rinap snorted.

A cloud of self-consciousness darkened little Filhia’s face. She took Ivy's hand and tried to pull her along, rolling her eyes.

“Come Hiranah, these two are stupid,” Filhia said. “We should leave them behind.” Ivy bit back a laugh and nodded gravely to the youngest girl, letting her lead the way.

Rinap was a little firecracker and reminded Ivy in many ways of Jayne. The women of the cave were well aware of Kari's infatuation. When the boy wasn't strutting about hoping to catch Rinap's attention, he was staring moon-eyed from his hearth. He was certainly no match for Rinap’s wiles.
Poor boy,
Ivy thought.
I hope he has his wits about him.

The wretched smell of the spiky green durian fruit was now all too familiar. They collected a half dozen of the larger ones, each over a foot long, while Kyah stuffed her mouth. Leihna showed Ivy how to grate the barbed points on a rock, making them easier to carry.

“I still hate them,” Ivy muttered. She breathed through her mouth for as long as she could to escape the stink.

The girls were met halfway by Phren who had come as escort to the trade. They each carried two woven palm baskets, now heavy with durian and oleos nuts, dalunut, volcanic glass cores and bladders of fermented tuak. Not long after Phren arrived, the girls spotted a beehive. At Rinap’s suggestion, they each threw a spear into a knotted tree to determine the loser. With the poorest aim, Ivy had drawn the proverbial short straw.

Now Ivy crouched precariously on a high branch with Rinap beside her, a shell bowl in one hand filled with dung and a flaming torch in the other.

“Just do it, Hiranah! You’re so big that you don’t even need to stretch!” Filhia encouraged.

“We have more than enough to trade already,” countered Phren from far below. The old woman shot a warning look up at Rinap. “You girls will carry her home if she falls.”

Leihna failed to hide her amusement behind her hands. Rinap was outright laughing.

“Just keep staring at them Hiranah, eventually your face might scare the bees away,” Rinap said. Ivy gave her a solid nudge with her elbow. Rinap’s endless taunts about Ivy’s appearance were a running joke between them. Rinap surveyed the cone-shaped beehive dangling above Ivy's head and took a dramatic breath for her audience below.

“Even a baby like Turi could do this. But I suppose if you’re scared…”

Ivy shot Rinap a glare.

“Never!”

A swarm of guard bees buzzed around the entrance to the hive, colourful and alert. Inside, the older bees worked, unaware of the threat, but more venomous by far. Below, Leihna and Filhia cheered Ivy on while Phren frowned.

“Be brave, Hiranah!” Filhia called. The littlest girl’s positivity at the outcome far surpassed Ivy’s own. Rinap leant in close, one hand stabilizing Ivy’s wrist and the other curled around the branch beside her. Her features and voice softened uncharacteristically.

“I won’t let you fall,” Rinap said, squeezing Ivy’s wrist gently.

Ivy smirked. “You’d better not. If you do, I’ll tell Kari I heard you singing about him again.”

“You would not!” Rinap exclaimed. Ivy winked at her, leaving Rinap frowning in confusion.

“Hurry up!” yelled Leihna from below.

“Alright. Ready. Now!” Ivy lit the bowl of dung into flames then dropped the burning torch down through the branches into Leihna's waiting hands. She sprang up, balancing on her toes. Ivy blew the heavily smoking dung as forcefully as she could into the hive. The guard bees were hoodwinked. The smoke dulled their senses, circumventing the release of pheromone alarm odours to alert their venomous brothers to sting. Instead, the older bees instinctively gorged into the honey, pacified with the sudden urge to fill their stomachs in case a fire ruined their hive and forced them to build another. Squinting through the smoke, Ivy fingered the sticky mass inside. With a grimace she pulled out large combs of dripping honey and dropped them into Rinap’s bowl. The stunned bees were brushed off and returned to their hive.