Chapter Twenty-Eight
Elliot had no idea how to face Farlden and Barve after the scene with his family. It was worse than he had even imagined and he knew he would never forget the shocked expression on Farlden’s face over his mother and Jasper’s comments. However hurt he’d been by what the brothers had done, he had never wanted something like this to happen. He didn’t have a clue what to say to his family either, knowing that they would never understand a friendship with Neans. It was such a horrible mess. He didn’t have a clue what to do to appease anyone and he still loved his family and liked the Neans.
A darkness caught his eye and he turned round and saw a black shadow in the corner of his university room. As the shadow turned into Dervyl, the woman who had said she belonged to a different human species, he remembered the morning at his home before he first came to university.
“You watched me before,” he said, unnerved at the thought that she could have been secretly studying him for months or even years. “I thought you were part of a dream.”
Once again he found it difficult to see her properly, a strange shimmering light behind her that glinted and moved. She took a step towards him and the light immediately vanished, like a door being shut. She was short, perhaps 5’3” like Barve, with dark skin, a double-edged brow ridge and eyes that had an alien quality, not quite like those of either Sapiens or Neans.
“I’m sorry for startling you,” she said, clearly trying to soothe him, but there was an awkward roughness to her speech as if she didn’t often use it. “I needed to know what kind of person you were – if my people could trust you – before letting you know of my existence.”
He asked the question he hadn’t been able to get out of his mind. “How could the world not know about an entirely new human species?”
“Your people do know of my origins. Your race named mine Homo Ergaster. We lived for hundreds of thousands of years before your people and the Neanderthals came into existence.”
“Then why didn’t we encounter you?” He didn’t know enough about human evolution to understand the timeline she was talking about and made a mental note to find books on the subject as soon as possible.
“You did. You just don’t remember it because, unlike the Neans, you have no ancestral memory and, of course, writing is a modern invention for you.” His mind was struggling to take this in as she continued, “By the time you did first meet us we had developed the skills we needed to cope with the external world and were looking inwards, trying to understand the forces that control the universe. We had already begun to live in a separate dimension from other species and, when you began showing violent tendencies, we increasingly withdrew until your species forgot about our existence.”
A different dimension. He had seen a couple of science-fiction films that talked about such things but never imagined that there was any truth in them. How could an entire race manage to travel to a different dimension? “Neans always knew about you?”
“Yes. Their ancestral memory meant they would always remember us, even if it was just as a myth, but we felt a kinship with them and, for thousands of years, we have helped protect them from the violence of the Homo Sapiens people.”
He remembered something his mother had said about Neans having been able to avoid the DNA weapons that had once been intended to wipe out the Neans in entire countries. “You stopped Sapiens destroying the Nean species.”
“We have sheltered them in our dimension when necessary.”
“That’s possible?” The thought of visiting a different dimension made every other thought leave his mind. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it would be like. Would the world be like Earth or would it be utterly different? Was Izient society structured like theirs or not? “Could I go there?”
“I would be glad to show you my home once you’re ready to make a commitment to my people and the Neans.”
These words made him hesitate and study the small, slender woman warily. “What sort of commitment? You’re not planning a war?”
“No. Like Neans, we hate violence. Killing is the last thing we would ever do. That’s why we would all be in danger if Sapiens knew about us.”
He thought about this and about his mother. “The governments would want to enslave and use you the way they did with Neans or, worse, if they saw you as enough of a threat they might try to commit genocide.”
“We have to do something to stop this threat.”
He stared at her, trying to understand. If they weren’t suggesting violence, he didn’t know what was left to change the way the world worked. “What will you do?”
“I can’t explain our plans until I know which side you will support.”
“But how can I choose a side if I don’t know what you want to do?” he asked, frustrated.
“I will tell you what I can about my people and let you understand us. After that, it’s your decision.”
It was too much to take in. How could he make a choice that would affect three entire human species?