Human (4 page)

Gradually, the bonobo seemed to become accustomed to her presence. As Ivy daydreamed against the steel bars on the fifth afternoon, she realised that K32 had left her open crate. When dusk descended, the bonobo had moved closer still. It was so gradual, Ivy barely noticed. Finally, there was nothing between them but unforgiving metal bars. Ivy reached her hand up to curl around the steel. Painfully slowly, with her eyes to the ground, K32 copied her. As the bonobo’s long fingers curled over Ivy’s, the metal underneath seemed to melt away.

From a memory long buried, Ivy finally found it. The perfect name.

“Kyah,” Ivy whispered. “You aren’t a number anymore. You’re Kyah.” Ivy repeated it softly, over and again. Eventually, Kyah looked up. An immense sadness within her deep, brown eyes made Ivy's heart ache. Kyah pushed her fingers through the bars towards Ivy's face. Ivy covered them with her own.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, she wasn't alone.

From that moment on, they had been inseparable. For two years now, Ivy had become surrogate mother to the bonobo who had been orphaned so many years before. Her socialisation and behaviour had improved dramatically. Now ten years old, Kyah was Ivy’s clandestined companion around campus, occasionally seen loping by her side through the grounds at dusk and spending countless hours playing in the enclosure. Others found refuge here, as an intermediate hospice between rescue and retirement. Long-term placement in rehabilitation facilities and zoos were scarce, so a small number of chimps stayed as permanent residents, observed for behavioural studies. Working closely with dedicated keepers, they learnt symbols and words with varying levels of success. Kyah quietly observed their lessons, sitting apart while the humans invaded her living space. Although she was never taught the lexicons directly, Kyah knew many of them and frequently drew them on the concrete floor in chalk to emphasize what she wanted from Ivy.
Sandwich, tickle, yellow rope, quiet…

With years of abuse still etched in her memory, her quiet and anxious manner would trust no one but Ivy. Her head twitched sharply to the left, a nervous habit she developed in her solitary infancy. This was accompanied by a tendency to pick at her chest, leaving tiny scratches scarring her heart.

“You'll need antiseptic on that,” Ivy said breaking out of her reverie, as she watched Kyah picking once again at her inflamed chest. Ivy retreated to the locked first aid cabinet where she found not only Kyah’s medication, but also a small parcel wrapped in brown paper. The word ‘matchstick’ was scrawled on the top. Tearing it open excitedly, Ivy caught her breath. It was a book. Ancient, fragile and well read, but solidly bound. ‘
On the Origin of Species’
was printed in faded gold lettering down the spine,
‘1883 edition’
. A lump caught in her throat as she touched it reverently.
You’re too much sometimes, Liam,
Ivy thought. She tucked it carefully inside her jacket and walked back into Kyah’s cage.

Leaping above her in the maze of ropes and ladders, the three other residents hooted playfully to each other. Kneeling in front of her on the floor, Ivy smeared antiseptic across Kyah’s scratched chest. The bonobo’s body stiffened with the sting but she didn't strike out. Of all the staff that cared for her, only Ivy was trusted to administer her medication.

Kyah curled affectionately into Ivy's lap and then changed her mind. She picked up a yellow stick of chalk lying nearby. In wide strokes on the concrete floor, Kyah presented Ivy with her request.
See birds now. Tree.

“I’ll get you out of here this afternoon Ky,” soothed Ivy taking her hand, “I promise I’ll be back as soon as it’s safe.”

Ivy got to her feet and Kyah followed her to the wire door with her head down and eyes shining. The bonobo trailed long, sensitive fingertips over the steel bars as Ivy locked her within them. An aching heart dogged Ivy’s steps as it always did walking away, with little consolation gained by knowing that her promise was sincere.

CSIRO Radio Physics Conference Suite, Darling Harbour, Sydney.

A thousand kilometres away, overlooking Sydney harbour, Dr Neil Crawford scowled into his scotch. Slamming it on the table he turned from the sheets of glass that walled the sleek hotel room from the traffic-jammed streets below. The blue banded sphere emblazoned on the coffee mug was splashed with amber liquid and he flicked his hand in irritation. The map of Australia in the centre of the logo seemed to mock him. He butted his cigarette into a marble dish of complimentary mints.

“This is bullshit,” he growled. “We’ve been hanging by our toenails trying to get these readings – I need some answers!”

No response.
Neil pulled at the knot in his tie and took a deep breath. In his younger days, being stuffed into a laboratory at the beck and call of his superiors had rankled his ego, but now he wondered if he'd actually had the upper hand after all. It was at times like this, that being on the ground floor was the only cure to insufferable incompetence.

“What- is- this- thing- and- why- the- hell- can’t- you- track- it?”

The conference phone crackled with the awkward shuffle of bodies in chairs. He pictured their eyes darting as they silently jousted from the responsibility of bearing bad news. Finally, a woman’s low, calm voice sounded through the speaker.

“Director, it’s only a matter of time, the readings were getting stronger day by day. Forty-eight hours of corrupted data is just a hiccup – and Dimitri’s working on a recovery. We'll have it- soon.”

“Soon? Not good enough and you both know it.” The danger inherent in Neil’s restrained reply was effective.

Her smooth voice faltered with doubt. The excuses kicked in. “Look Neil, our equipment isn’t sensitive enough. If we could just get more data- a stronger source point – then we could isolate this … anomaly. We
need more
data.”

“We
need
to be discreet!” Neil spat back. “Whatever the hell we’re picking up here needs to stay in that room. I can’t afford to draw attention to this by opening communication with NASA yet – we’ll lose the ball and any rights along with it. I’ve already got the board breathing down my neck, so we’ve got to get this
right
before we hand it over. Do
you
want to explain to the NASA Board of Directors that we fucked up
again
?”

He pictured Cassandra Chevalier pouting on the other end of the line, Dimitri Angelis hiding behind her skirt. Both were digital systems engineers under his umbrella in the CSIRO Division for Astronomy and Space. In his opinion, both were quickly becoming dispensable.

At least Cassandra has other assets.
Neil smirked lewdly to the benefit of no one. Since she’d arrived at the sprawling ITC Centre, Cassandra had elevated rapidly to senior research level at the Radio Physics Headquarters. Twenty kilometres north-west of Sydney, the Marsfield Laboratories were home to one hundred and eighty researchers managing data from the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility, ICT Centre and Anglo-Australian Observatory. Cassandra was confident, intelligent and shrewd. She knew how to play the game.

He exhaled into his fist. Neil had seen twenty years in office, a game of arse-kissing he played with the same affected interest he had paid his ex-wife. This discovery was
intrinsic
to his plans. He knew he was already on thin ice.
Johnston did it, they set me up to fail, the bastards. And now the inquiry with NASA… Jesus Christ, I need this one.

This energy mutation – potentially capable of powering an entire city, was the perfect parcel. He wasn’t going to let a minx and her pet nerd screw it up for him.

“Okay kids – we need a new plan,” Neil said. “This data stays with
us
. Dimitri – keep working on that recovery, as soon as we’re back online
I want to know about it
. If we’re right in our predictions, we’ve got less than a week before we get a major energy kick up the arse.
Less than one week, got that?
I want to be onto it –
first
with the press, publicity, interviews – this is
our
game. Both of you – get your shit together and get on the next flight out. Meet me at The Dish.”

Stretched under a tree in the vast quadrangle, the late afternoon sun filtered lazily through low-hanging leaves. The grounds were nearly deserted. This was Ivy’s favourite time of day, when she was allowed to give Kyah a taste of the freedom she yearned for. Now, the bonobo explored the branches above, dangling one-armed and hooting softly. At this time of day, the few straggling staff and students still leaving were familiar with seeing Kyah around the campus, and either ignored her or smiled at Ivy as they passed. Confident that Kyah was occupied tormenting a line of ants that trailed the jacaranda tree above her, Ivy stretched out and closed her eyes, silently revelling in the soft breeze. She tucked the headphones of her music player into her ears and scrolled through her favourite playlist, settling back on the grass. Ivy's thoughts drifted lazily from Kyah to her research, then to familiar faces and new faces around campus. A fleeting figure with dark wavy hair and a boyish grin swept through her mind. Ivy smiled at thoughts which were now far from work, completely unaware that she was being watched by two separate individuals.

“Ivy!” Jayne came hurrying across the grass, blonde hair whipping her face.

Ivy sat forward as Jayne approached, gathering her music player and placing it behind her.

“What's up?”

“Ivy,
the first artefacts have arrived!
They're amazing, covered in red blood cells and cellulose, starch, fibres…. Seriously hon, we're going to be looking at these for
months
. I don't even know where to start! They've sent charcoal and calcite as well; Eli's running it through the system. We should have our own radiocarbon date confirmed in a few days….”

Ivy could feel Jayne's excitement shared in her own veins.

Morwood’s team had been pushing for excavation approval in Indonesia for years, fuelled by the growing realisation that Aboriginal culture in north-west Australia bore resemblance in sophistication and style to those in Borneo. This discovery pinpointed Indonesia as a prime suspect for funnelling the first migrations of humans to colonise Australia from Asia.

It made sense. Migrating from mainland Asia to the joined continent of New Guinea and Australia would have been akin to an epic prehistoric game of stepping stones. There were a handful of potential pathways through the 13,000 islands of the Indonesian Archipelago to navigate, situated close enough that each progressive island could have been seen from the one before. However, it wasn’t likely an easy trip.

Dangerous currents still isolated the string of volcanic islands from greater Asia by a menacing division known as the Wallace Line. In their tropical seclusion untouched by humans, the islands had flourished, tempered by seasonal monsoonal rains and harsh, dry winds that left the earth thirsty. Birds and animals grew bizarre in their isolation and each island became a game board of nature’s experiments.

Then fifty thousand years ago with a burst into sea-faring technology, modern humans finally broke through the perilous water break. They had populated the volcanic necklace of Nusa Tengarra and forged new homes throughout South-East Asia, island-hopping all the way south to Australia and ulimately, leaving tantalising archaeological evidence of their trip.
Somewhere
. Morwood’s team needed proof – and a place in Indonesia to begin the task of sifting through time, unearthing the origins of the first Australians.

Propelled by the potential of a known Stone Age site at Mata Menge in Flores, a small team had broken off to perform an exploratory dig in the cave of Liang Bua, near Ruteng. After months of careful excavation, they'd been greeted with little reward but fragments of animal bone and charcoal in caves; tempting evidence of fire-making hunters long gone. The questions they raised far outweighed their scant evidence.

Still the digging went on, wearing resources, optimism and funding thin. But hidden in that deep, dark cave, a secret lay six meters underground. A secret so shocking, that it turned the scientific community inside out.