by Ian Whates
“Are you talking about some kind of monkey or parrot?” Lydia asked. A reasonable question, considering they had been fooled too many times.
The elder shook his head. It was clear he was not joking this time. His voice sounded full of awe and fear. “No one had gone there in many generations.”
He showed them two skulls in a shrine-cave. They looked just like the one Benjamin had bought.
LYDIA AND BENJAMIN held their breath as they watched the dance in the clearing.
The biologists were well camouflaged in their treetop perch some three hundred meters away, and the rain forest in between was filled with the noise of chittering birds, scurrying lizards, skittering insects, and dripping water. Still, it was best to stay as quiet as possible.
Through their binoculars, they could see that the tribe, numbering about thirty, stood in a semicircle. They chanted tunelessly and knocked coconut shells together without rhythm. To the accompaniment of this not-quite-music, an old man with fuzzy white hair performed in the middle. He jumped, ducked, waved a stone axe above his head against imaginary enemies.
They got a good look at his face as he turned to face their direction: protruding jaw, dark and wrinkled skin, strong bony ridges around the eye sockets, a flat nose. Though he knew the image was technically wrong, Benjamin couldn’t help thinking of it as halfway between a human and an ape.
The old man continued to dance, his grapefruit-sized head bobbing above his three-foot tall body.
“I KIND OF wish we had champagne.”
“Oh, when we get back, you’ll have all the champagne you can stomach.”
THE YOUNG MAN attacked suddenly with a stone-tipped cudgel. He meant to kill.
But the old man was experienced. He dodged out of the way and kicked the cudgel out of his opponent’s hand. Then he wrestled the youth to the ground. It was a brutal fight, teeth were bared, ears torn, blood flowed.
“What’s the fight about?” Benjamin whispered.
Lydia shrugged. Dominance? A female? Or was it something more abstract and human: vengeance, justice, a moral stance?
Through the binoculars, the old man bit into the young man’s neck. The biologists flinched.
BENJAMIN FOUND IT hard to interpret the behaviors of the subjects he was observing. If he assumed they were ‘people,’ it looked like they held conversations, enjoyed friendships and family time, sat around the fire as they cooked and daydreamed. How was the flavor of their thought, the qualia of their experience, Benjamin wondered, different from ours?
But if he assumed that they were ‘not people,’ it looked like they shared brief vocalizations, were rigidly hierarchical in their social interactions, and sat still in the midday heat to conserve energy. They groomed each other sometimes, and they made primitive tools not much more advanced than those made by the great apes.
Am I seeing them? Benjamin wondered. Or only a shadow of us in them?
They were clearly not as intelligent as humans, different, alien. Benjamin imagined how the footage would play on TV.
“WHEN DO YOU want to make first contact?” Benjamin asked.
He had been daydreaming about the hero’s welcome he’d receive when he got home with the discovery. Professor Mair will surely be a little more polite now that Benjamin is a celebrity for grant committees.
“We’re not prepped for that,” said Lydia. “It’s not as easy as just walking in there to say ‘we come in peace’.”
“So what’s involved?”
“Well, for one thing, you and I are carrying millions of germs which the Flores Men have never encountered. If they’re closely related to us, they’re likely susceptible to them as well.”
Benjamin sobered. In the history of first contacts, disease had caused many more deaths than ill will. “What else?”
“I’m certain they’ll react to us with hostility. We’ll need to be prepared to protect ourselves. Can’t say I blame them. Imagine if you saw a couple of odd-looking giants stumping into your backyard.”
Benjamin nodded reluctantly. “Didn’t you say you worked with an uncontacted tribe back in the Amazon? How did you manage that?”
At first, Lydia was reluctant to discuss it, but Benjamin persisted. She said, “The professor planned it for years. He designed decontamination procedures, drew up possible nonverbal communication protocols, and investigated nonlethal weapons that could be used to protect us without killing or injuring them. The summer I signed on was supposed to be the big year, when we finally put everything into practice. But it was all for nothing.”
“What happened?”
“To get funding, he had to do quite a bit of publicity. A few enterprising Brazilian companies heard about it and decided that they’d run adventure tours and bring wealthy American and European tourists into the jungle to make their own first contact with the tribe.”
“Oh.” Benjamin tried to imagine the chaos.
“Yeah. It was a circus. They had news helicopters flying in to film the people throwing spears at the cameras. A few of the tourists were injured, and then the guides brought out their guns. Lots of diplomatic protests and finger pointing followed. The professor’s life’s work was ruined.”
Benjamin noticed that Lydia didn’t mention what happened to the tribe after that.
“MAYBE...” BENJAMIN LOOKED at Lydia across the camp lamp, shaded so the light wouldn’t be seen from a distance. “... we shouldn’t speak of this when we get back.”
“You want us to keep mum until you publish?”
“No,” he said. “Can we just... say nothing, forever?”
“What are you talking about? This is the find of the century. Living fossils! These people will be the very poster children for human evolution. There will be bestselling books, documentaries, movies!”
“Are you sure that they’ll be seen as people? The ‘little people’ are not human. That’s the point. The adventure tours, they’ll come. So will trophy hunters and poachers.”
“They’ll be protected. They’re too valuable scientifically.”
“Then they’ll be taken from their home to be bred in captivity in research labs. That’s not a life for people.” He paused, and fidgeted with a length of rope. “But I think they are people, just a little different from us.”
“Believe it or not,” Lydia said, “it’s not riches or fame that I care about. There are easier ways to get both. You and I are both here because we’re scientists. We’re obsessed about finding out things, but we’re not the source of evil.”
“No matter what, when our world finds out about them, their world will be gone. We’ve never been able to co-exist peacefully with a species so close to us and yet so alien. Wherever modern humans arrived, other hominid species disappeared.”
Lydia narrowed her eyes at him, but she kept her tone even. “I know very well how ugly it can get when people justify barbarism in the name of science. My great grandfather was one of the subjects in the Australian Aboriginal IQ studies that declared a whole people inferior. But it’s not right to keep this discovery a secret out of fear.”
Benjamin blew out a held breath and shook his head. He gazed into the woods, where the Flores Men were hidden. “This will be even worse. We and they don’t belong to the same species. There will be no moral prohibition against treating them as inferior, as not human. It’s not about fear. It’s about responsibility.”
“So you preach ignorance. You think the responsible thing to do is to leave them here and pretend that they don’t exist? I know you have these romantic notions about not interfering with the ‘natives,’ but what makes you think you get to decide for them? The world is changing. Sooner or later, our poisons and diseases will arrive here on floating garbage or on migratory birds. Maybe the sea level will rise and flood their home, at the rate things are going. There’s no place on this planet free from our influence. Do you want to see them die from causes that we have solutions for? Can’t you hear the arrogance in what you’re proposing?”
Benjamin
looked around helplessly, unable to decide if the dense jungle was innocent or savage, knowing that both words were wrong.
IS THERE A way to make sure that the Flores Men will be seen as human?
Benjamin decided to look for something specific.
He searched for and found abandoned tools: the stones were chipped roughly, the handles smoothed for easy grip. There were no decorative carvings or flourishes.
He examined their clothing through the binoculars: sun-shielding head coverings woven from leafy branches and pelts draped over the shoulder to carry food and tools. All very functional.
He squinted at their fire pits: circular and lined with bare stones. He thought about their almost-dance and close-to-music: was it just an expression of excitement or were there deliberate patterns that served no purpose but to be pleasing to the ear and eye?
He looked for anything that could be called art, and found nothing definitive.
THROUGH THE MIST, the biologists could make out the tribe huddling by the shore.
They settled the young man onto the raft and pushed it into the water. Half-hidden in a nest woven from branches, the lifeless body seemed even smaller, more fragile.
The old man stood on the beach and watched as the raft bobbed up and down in the waves, until the current seized it and pulled it out to sea. Behind him, the other members of the tribe waited, silently keeping watch over the sea burial like stone statues.
Then, one of the women collapsed to the ground and howled. Tears and mucus covered her face as she wrapped her arms around herself and rocked back and forth.
The old man turned around and walked to stand before her. Then he knelt and lowered his face to the ground.
Without speaking to each other, Lydia and Benjamin lowered their binoculars at the same time and turned their faces away. It was too intimate a moment: simultaneously older than the Trojan War and newer than the puddles left by the morning thunderstorm.
STRIKING CAMP DIDN’T take very long. They had been careful about keeping their footprint small.
As they continued to pack supplies into the boat, Lydia said, apropos of nothing, “That summer, one of the men in the tribe was killed. They filmed the whole burial with a tree-top camera, and then had commentators dissect it in slow motion, picking over every frame on TV. Someone later decided it was a good idea to try to dig up the body and try to sell it to scientists. I’d never been so disgusted.”
Benjamin nodded. There was no need to say anything. This was as close as Lydia was going to get to maybe you’re right.
They scoured over the campsite, picking up trash, processed food, anything else that might harm the inhabitants of the island.
“But you know this is only temporary,” Lydia said. She was now sitting in the boat, hand on the tiller. “People are always looking for virgin beaches to develop, to build new resorts. The Flores Men can’t hide forever.”
Benjamin huffed as he pushed the boat away from shore, wading into the sea up to his knees. “Not forever. We’ll come back in a few years and check on them.”
“We will?” Lydia’s eyebrows lifted. “And what do you hope to find in a few years?”
“Signs.” Benjamin jumped into the boat. He pointed up the shore, at a small pile of objects piled some distance away from the waterline.
In that pile were some photographs he had taken in Jakarta: the skyscrapers and the street vendors, the bright lights at night and the busy colors during the day, the ten million inhabitants of all races and faiths in a worldly capital. He also left behind the binoculars and his Swiss Army knife. Added to that were a few buttons, coins, and a set of stainless steel dining utensils. He had chosen objects that he could sterilize with their field kit.
On top of the pile, he had also left his sketchbook. In it was a hand-drawn map of the island and many sketches he had made of the Flores Men. He wasn’t much of an artist, but he had tried to capture what he had felt: the fluidity of motion as the old man had danced; the explosive force and power of the fight; the calming camaraderie of two friends in conversation; the gut-wrenching pain in the presence of unspeakable grief.
“Why?”
“These are signs of a world beyond what they can see. Perhaps they’ll be inspired to leave home and explore beyond the horizon. Perhaps they’ll come up with new tools and new uses. But no matter what, when they finally see us, they’ll be more prepared than they are now.”
What he didn’t voice was a secret hope. He hoped that they would take up art based on his examples. Once the Flores Men could produce their own art, it would be much harder for others to deny that they were people.
“But maybe they’ll start a religion based on these objects. Or they’ll fight a war over them. You can’t predict what will happen, Benjamin.”
“Maybe not,” he conceded. “But contact or not, it shouldn’t be only our decision. You’re right that it’s arrogant to decide for them. I want to give them a few signs so that they can at least decide on their own time, on their own terms, whether they want to come and seek us out.”
“And if we come back and find that they wanted nothing to do with your gifts?”
“Then we should respect their decision to want no contact at all.”
They felt the current tugging the boat away from the island. Benjamin took from his backpack the skull pieces he had purchased from Loy and reverently dropped them into the sea. The two of them observed a moment of silence.
Lydia let out a held breath. “I wonder how many others before have done what we’re doing. We often celebrate the discoverers. But maybe it’s the undiscoverers that we should be proud of.”
“Just because we think the story will end inevitably a certain way doesn’t mean that we have to tell it that way. We have a choice.” Benjamin gazed back at the island as the current sped up, and the boat accelerated. The jungle, he saw now, was neither Eden nor the heart of darkness. “And now, so do they.”
A TASTE FOR MURDER
JULIE E. CZERNEDA
Since 1997, Canadian author/editor Julie E. Czerneda has poured her love of biology into SF novels published by DAW Books NY. Her latest work is the fantasy A Turn of Light. Coming fall 2014: Species Imperative, the 10th anniversary omnibus edition of her acclaimed trilogy, and A Play of Shadow, sequel to Turn. After that, she’s back to SF with Reunification. Visit her at www.czerneda.com for more.
THURSDAY WAS DIALLED warm and sunny, with a soft breeze aimed straight over the rose arbours. Perfect for a funeral.
I should know, I’d been to more than my share this week. Before you ask, that’s because I’m sitting a homicide desk while Ortmer adapts to his clin-mod – stupid blighter’s regrowing fingers – and the newest face always gets stuck in a suit to attend funerals. Not any or all, mind you. Just those of particular interest to the department.
Judging by the glitter of media eyes amid the branches of the nicely groomed trees edging the high-class section of Glendale’s Forever Gardens, we weren’t alone in wondering about the untimely death of Marie-Jeanne Baptiste, tastemaker.
Me? The name’s Martin. Denny Rashid Martin. Probably the only one unawed by present company. Back when I was a street cop, as in last week, the Fashion District was my beat, making Baptiste’s funeral like being home. Most of the celebs here I’d watched slink from the synth clinics through back doors or after hours, desperate to avoid the paparazzi until their friv-mods had taken hold and they could show off the result. They’d spot me and demand to know where their limo or taxi was waiting, as if I was someone who gave a shit. I’d tell them to take the first available right turn, while trying not to look too close. Trust me, you don’t want to see skin ripple as it changes colour or texture – or facial bones melt and reform – and as for horns bursting from boils? Then there’s the screaming when the drugs wear off...
No thanks.
Perishing chance any of them would recognize me out of my blues. A uniform’s better than an invisibility cloak.
I recognize
d them, as I’m sure they’d expect, and could make a good guess as to the clinic responsible for their mods, which they wouldn’t.
Scuttlebutt claimed a senior investigator wanted this assignment and was refused. A fan, I suppose. I wasn’t. The District is pure theatre. The ground floor clinics are fronted by gorgeous facades and glamorous lounges, with staff who are oh so professional and smooth and reassuring. All have booths where you can preview your perfectly modified self. Oh, and every one discreetly offers credit, if you can’t afford the fee, at interest rates to make a loan-shark blush. Get you coming and going, they do.
Gag a maggot.
Their back doors opened on the truth. Cramped incursion rooms, illegal biowaste digesters, poorly-trained techs. Dreams forced into unwilling flesh; nightmares, often as not, the result. The alleys crawl with drooling, mindless addicts hooked on whatever they’d been given to shut them up when their mods went wrong; late night deliveries of questionable supplies send them scurrying into the dark, but they always come back. So do the gangs sneaking in new members for tag-mods because, hey, nothing says you belong – and keeps you belonging – like the same bargain-basement fangs or claws.
No hint of cheap here. Or failure. To ogle high-end friv-mods like those on display at Baptiste’s funeral, you’d have to pay a fortune for a seat by the runways at Fashion Week, when mod developers reveal their latest wares.
My maternal grandfather once told me: “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks.” Maybe then. These days, dogs don’t age mentally any more than people. It’s coming up with new tricks for them that’s troublesome. They get bored.
So do we. Which explains quite a bit, in my opinion.
Right around the time clin-mods became the cure-all everyone had hoped, with genetic tweaking leading the way and biotech taking up any slack, synth clinics like Star Power Inc. sprang up to offer custom career-enhancing modifications. Not so essential to health, but popular. Society barely gasped for breath before true friv-mods appeared – guaranteed safe, mind you, as if... – the results sweeping like a contagion across the world. Want a new skin colour? Different eyes? Sex? Nostril hair? DIYbio kits offered anyone the chance to create the next must-have mod. Anything seemed possible.