Human (8 page)

Ivy sat up, cursing that once again her mostly sleepless night had ended in horror. Different dreams, different threats but always the same desperation to protect- planning an escape, creating diversions, hiding places, shielding, carrying. All to save herself from losing them over and over again. She could live with death, as long as it was only her own. The dreams had been the same since she was a child. Vivid, extraordinarily real, terrifying.

The hunter was humanity in all of its shades of grey. The unpredictable shadows where every man hid a secret cache of darkness. Where good intentions could be misguided and evils justified. Or even perhaps, where evil crept from a mind drawn solely to cruelty and control. It was that which Ivy feared most.

The killer had a single purpose. To hurt these people. To take them from Ivy's life. To leave her empty.
Loss.

The boy with the ashen hair and grey eyes laughed in her mind. Ivy buried her face in her hands and took a deep breath.
Jasper.
Some nights, the sound of the river rushed through her dreams, dragging her back under to the place she lost him, the deep swirling black. It had been her idea to go swimming that day. The day Ivy lost her childhood sweetheart and the walls began creeping up around her heart. Within a year, her mother had passed away and her father, stricken with grief, had left.
More loss.

The dreams never disappeared when she woke up; they haunted until her mind found a distraction each day. Ivy was used to them now, many years had dulled her waking senses to their potency and she no longer dwelled or cried on them when they woke her at night. Sleep was elusive. Being an insomniac helped for the most part, Ivy didn’t need much sleep to function quite well and a heavy duty work and study schedule benefited from that inconvenience quite nicely. She was only betrayed by somewhat tired eyes and a journal fit for a box-office premiere. Yawning into the mirror and pulling at her tired face, Ivy let a hot shower wash the nightmare away.

She rummaged through her neglected jewellery box for the only silver chain she had. It was cheap with a faulty clasp so Ivy resolved to get a replacement as soon as she could. She threaded the amulet on and closed it behind her neck.
I.C.
read against the small of her throat. It felt unusually warm against her skin, despite the cold morning. Skipping breakfast, Ivy ducked down the cracked concrete stairs. Her palm brushed lightly across the mass of tiny daises at the entrance of her apartment building. The outstretched fingers of autumns hand seemed to be grasping for something to hold onto this morning.

She was late, as usual. Entering the Residue Analysis lab, Ivy pulled on an old stained laboratory coat and attempted to tie back her uncooperative hair. Jayne was already preparing blood samples for DNA amplification.

“Hey hon!” Jayne looked far too chirpy for this time of day. “I've done a preliminary analysis of the first blade from the Flores dig. Red blood cells all over it.”

Ivy returned Jayne's victory smile, settling down on a nearby bench. “Brilliant. Let me know if you need any help.” Surreptitiously, Ivy noted Jayne's slow and methodical progress and was pleased. A small collection of control samples was already waiting to her left. Tiny vials of solution would be spun in the centrifuge for hours to filter unwanted particles from the genetic soup-mix. DNA replication would follow, and then reference comparison. Finally, she would identify the animal that fell victim to the blade.

From these tiny samples, Ivy could determine the subsistence patterns of this long extinct and tiny hunter
Homo floresiensis.
The stone tools told her what animals had been butchered, birds killed, plants crudely chopped, which roots and tubers slowly cooked. It was an emerging specialisation with a complex methodology. Ivy forged through its boundaries. In small laboratories across the world, other scientists kept the race alive. Competition was fierce, academic criticism was rife and the stakes for success were high.

Flicking on the radio and pulling on gloves, Ivy peered into the cardboard box. Within it were a dozen small clear bags holding dirt-sifted stone tools. Each was labelled with an identification number corresponding to the stratigraphic layer in which the tool was found. She pulled out a large volcanic flake of black chert and took up her position at the electron microscope. An image of the roughly triangular stone flickered up onto a large screen above her desk as she focussed. She was surprised by what she saw. Although the excavating team had given her a description of the tools they had found - suggesting they were comparable to those of much more modern
Homo sapiens
, she couldn't help being cynical. But the technology of this stone
was
modern, or at least, too modern, and not what she had expected.

It was widely accepted that stone tools got more sophisticated, technically and functionally, the further up the evolutionary tree they appeared. It made sense. From nearly two million years ago, early hominids first started using crude stone choppers to break into marrow and sever the flesh and joints of their prey. Culminating with modern
Homo sapiens
, tools had progressed to delicate instruments and finely formed stone blades. Each tool was specialised for its use in processing vegetation, meat or decorative functions, skinning, carving or fighting.

The stone tool magnified on Ivy's monitor was supposedly created by a tiny-brained, chimp-like hominid, surely as evolutionarily distant from their modern large-brained cousins as humanly possible - yet the similarity in technology was remarkable. Ivy checked the box label again, looking for a mistake.
Liang Bua Sector IV; Layer 8; Section E (12 items).
She definitely had the right box. It seemed the evolutionary tree was about to be severely uprooted.

Ivy began photographing the microscopic hills and valleys of the stone. They were littered with remnants of ancient blood cells and the flesh of chopped plants. Cellulose plant fibres were draped in miniature desiccated ropes across the surface. After a while, a detailed pencil sketch accompanied the photograph files and notes. Ivy began another as the hours ticked by unnoticed. The third tool was larger; a core that had first been stripped of smaller, sharper flakes useful for slicing through flesh. Instead of being discarded however, a grainy polish along the worn stone edges was evident. The edge wear was likely the result of a back and forth motion of scraping raw animal hides. Ivy scribbled in her journal as she worked.

Marvelling at the tool maker's skill, she examined the next artefact. The stone had been progressively and deliberately chipped away along two parallel edges creating a crude and strong needle point. The stone could be then manipulated to perforate through tough hide and bone.

“A perforator Jayne…my god. I wonder what they used it for.” Still staring into the microscope eyepiece, Ivy pondered aloud. “Decoration of clothes, hides? No, surely not… too primitive….”

“
Hiranah…”
A deep voice whispered behind her neck, soft and guttural. Too close.

“Huh!?” Ivy's heart raced as she spun around.
Nobody.
She was alone in the room. The hair on her neck stiffened and tingled sending a shiver down her spine. The laboratory door was closed and there was nothing but space behind her. Jayne’s chair sat empty, her row of test tubes pushed neatly to the wall. A rush of cold ran up Ivy's arms and she shook off her imagination.

“Talking to myself - the first sign of madness.”

The word LUNCH was scrawled across the whiteboard with a happy face drawn underneath. “PS. Don't forget your two o'clock tutorial.” A husky-voiced presenter introduced another song on the radio as Ivy stared blankly for a moment at the whiteboard.

“Shit!” A glance at the clock as she ran out of the lab told her that she was already ten minutes late for the group of undergraduates waiting for her. Ivy took the stairs two at a time in favour of the temperamental elevator. Her tardiness was commonplace and the small, tightly-packed room of students hadn't appeared to notice. Chatting and texting with their feet on desks and coffees in hand, the group was typical of a second year class. It was early in the semester with exams still a distant thought and the confidence of their first year behind them.

“Sorry guys, important meeting,” she called over the general noise as she strode in, wondering if they ever actually believed her. It seemed they didn't.

“Nice meeting glasses,” laughed a pierced boy with shaggy, unwashed hair.

“Yeah thanks Travis.” Ivy rolled her eyes good-naturedly, trying to brush off her embarrassment. She rubbed the red rings around her eyes left by the microscope eyepiece, “Lost your brush again?” Travis chuckled and took an aim at the overflowing bin with his empty coffee cup.

“Alright let’s get into it shall we? What's on the agenda today?” Ivy asked.

“Chapter three - migration patterns,” offered Kathryn passing a fat textbook forward. One of only three mature-aged students in the class, her attentive and constant barrage of questions proved both annoying and useful to Ivy, as class discussions were often chanelled into interesting divergents.

Ivy perched herself on the front desk swinging her legs casually. “Right, okay so we're looking at the migration of early humans across the continents. Who, when, where, why and how. So, who did their readings?” A few mumbled apologies, a few “yeahs” and a handful of blank faces were thrown back at her.

“Come on guys,” Ivy admonished, “keep up or you'll be cramming pretty badly in a few weeks. Don't come crying to me when Professor Emery whips your arses.” A scattering of appreciative giggles followed Travis's impromptu demonstration.

“Righto, let’s get into it. Okay, the line of modern human evolution is based in a pretty complicated tree. We've got branches here and there and evidence from many different fields – archaeology – obviously, palaeoecology, geology, palaeobotany, climatology, and genetic phylogeography. We'll look at each of these methods in detail as we progress through this course. What we are interested in this term, is the spread of anatomically modern humans across the continents, particularly as it applies to South East Asia, including the Sahul continent.” She noted some quizzical eyebrows in the audience. “For those of you who didn't do their readings, that's Australia.” Someone at the back gave a patriotic whistle.

“So,” Ivy continued, determined not to lose their train of concentration so early, “who's going to give us a rundown on traditional theories?” Kathryn raised her hand as anticipated.

“Okay, Kath, the floor’s all yours.” Ivy leaned back surveying the room and the other students shuffled a little more upright in their chairs. Kathryn looked around a bit imperiously and cleared her throat recounting her exhaustive textbook analysis with perfect recollection.

“Brilliant,” said Ivy. “So we've got anatomically modern humans, skipping out of Africa within the last 100,000 years, which happens to coincide with some significant social advances and innovations in tool making. Innovation allows for the manipulation of new resources and environments; migration encourages change through adaptation; change leads to innovations in technology…. a classic case of which came first - the chicken or the egg? Migration or Innovation? But, we’ll get into that mess tomorrow.”

Ivy heard a few groans.

“But first,” she held up her hand, “let’s talk about a much earlier migration from Africa. Pre-humans originally left what is now considered to be the ‘cradle of humankind’ at some point between 1.8 million years and 300,000 years ago. We have numerous subspecies of Homo erectus that span Europe to Indonesia during that time.” Ivy grabbed a whiteboard marker and began scribbling notes on a timeline.

“We've got the sexy ‘Java Man’ excavated in 1893 and ‘Peking Man’ as our celebrity
erectus
poster boys.” She grinned at the anticipated wolf whistle.

“But there are many more sub-species; our smaller cousins
Homo erectus georgicus
from central Asia- 1.75 million years young, and from China you’ll find Nanjing Man, Lantian Man and Yuanmou Man. In Java we also have Solo Man and Tautavel Man lived in France nearly half a million years ago. Ironically, at least half of those fossil ‘men’ were female.” Kathryn shot her a wry smile.

“And let’s not forget
Homo erectus palaeojavanicus
. More commonly called ‘Meganthropus’,” Ivy continued, turning back to the whiteboard, “which is a seriously misunderstood fossil who was believed for a long time, to be a giant.” Ivy faced the group with a wide smile. “Sadly, he’s not a giant though- just the Schwarzenegger of hominids. Tall guy, big muscles, funny accent.”

“
Come with Meganthropus if you want to live
,” offered Travis in a terrible impersonation. A few students groaned and Claire kicked the back of his chair.

‘They couldn’t talk, idiot,” said Claire.

Travis looked affronted. “Could so. Couldn’t they Ives?”

Ivy bit back a laugh.

Oliver, a new transfer student turned to face Claire instead. “He’s right. Erectus had to have spoken in some capacity. They co-ordinated hunts, made complex tools and cared for weak and sick members of their groups. They could harness and use natural fire by 800,000 years ago, so they cooked their meat. Erectus had a larger brain capacity than earlier hominids and the part of the brain linked to speech was already developed. Right?”