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54.
Once again they were on the water. They headed southwest, hugging the coastline.
Alex suspected that the coastline roughly followed the old Atlantic contour, but several hundred miles further inland. Occasional Siirk fishing villages drifted past. He saw little evidence of technological progress—they were roughly in the 15th Century because they had guns, yet they seemed not to be great explorers or inventors. But they were sharp—Nizin clearly knew that the ship they’d visited had come from the sky somehow, and he wanted to trace its route back to raid whatever he could.
He witnessed his first fight between Siirk. It happened in the water as one swam back to the curtained mystery boat, and the other was just coming from there. They had a brief staring contest, then knives came out—thin, mean, personal dirks they were, not like the broad utility knives they carried on their belts—and one or both were about to die when Nizin stood up and yelled at them to grow up.
Finally, all the boats ran aground, as if to stay a while. Alex gathered there was a Siirk city further along the coast, but this was as far as they were going for now. This looked like one of Nizin’s permanent camps.
The Thuga were herded away somewhere. Nizin, Omas, and Kogran led Maryan and him through a forest, down through a canyon where they had to ford a small river, and back up the other side. The forest water was cold and his feet hurt. He was glad to be back in the sunlight, which warmed him back up.
They followed a broad trail of beaten earth, surrounded by thick forest on both sides. Occasionally, Siirk on horseback passed. At one crossroads, they saw two Siirk warriors in chain mail, leaning on their axes and chatting. These Siirk greeted Nizin with feral respect, deferent but proud, and there was always some loathsome undercurrent, Alex thought, in the way these reptile-men sized each other up.
The group turned on a narrower trail and entered an area of cliff dwellings. Passing there, they left the Siirk town and came to a beautiful wilderness. It was a mountain meadow full of gorgeously colored flowers. They marched toward a forest on the other side, and now the aim of their journey became clear.
Sitting at the edge of the forest was a giant ball with the same blinding, shiny material they’d seen in the wrecked spacecraft. Only this one wasn’t wrecked.
As they approached they came up to the ball, for it sat slightly elevated; they had to climb up a rubble wall about ten feet high to actually reach the ball. He noted the finely slitted vent grills that ran horizontally along the bottom. An array of broken tools littering around the base told him Nizin’s people had worked hard to pry this nut open, and had failed.
It was perfectly round, a ball he estimated to be fifty feet in diameter—the size of a small house.
“Geedeen!” their three Siirk officers yelled, all banging on the sides of the device. “Ingish!”
Nizin took him by the shoulder and pulled him close. Nizin lifted the amulet he wore on a thong around his neck and tapped it against the ball. He touched the skin, and a panel appeared in the otherwise perfectly featureless surface that captured the blue of the sky, the white of clouds, the light of the sun, and swirled them into a blinding abstraction.
“Greetings,” said a man in a suit, holding some papers as if he were a TV anchor. “I’m Vector, your friendly transport and communications expert. This automated boat has landed to answer your emergency call. First, we must determine if you are truly a human requiring assistance, or if the call was the result of some natural phenomenon such as lightning. Please state the name of the first President of the United States in English.”
“Ingish!” the Siirk yelled. Besides Omas, Nizin, and Kogran, a half dozen Siirk officers clustered around.
Noticing that Omas had the knife out, and Maryan in a headlock with the other arm, he said: “George Washington.”
“Thank you,” said the man brightly in his well-modulated announcer’s voice, “That is correct.”
The Siirk gaped as he continued: “Please choose from the following menu by reading out loud. If you are injured and cannot speak, please wait until the next scheduled orbital patrol can make a pass over your location.”
Orbital! They had something in orbit that sent out patrols? Yes, but a million years ago. If there were still someone up there, they would have long since come by to investigate. He felt safe betting that nobody would come to help them.
The Siirk were beside themselves, staring at the list of written items.
He now had a little bargaining power. He stripped his net off and threw it on the ground. He motioned for Maryan to come stand beside him. Omas let her go after a reluctant glance toward Nizin, who gave a hooded nod.
They stared up at the menu, which included: Injured?, Need Police?, Need Food & Water?, Lost?, Value Added Tax?, Voice Line, News Update, News Archive, More Selections.
Alex pressed News Update.
The Siirk stepped back, gasping, as an elderly woman anchor read slowly and painfully from a note pad in her trembling hand: “This is Jill Claymore with World News Incorporated aboard the orbiting city Yuri Gagarin. I am the last anchor person alive, and this will be my last broadcast. It is March 13, 2090, and I have been told that I only have a few weeks or months to live with my cancer. I don’t know if there are any people left on Earth. I do know there are fewer than 100 of us left here on the station, and all other points in space shut down years ago as we ran out of young people. I expect this generation will be finished in the next five years or less, because I am 86 years old and one of the youngest persons here.
“It may well be that you are a freshly born young person, a clone of someone who lived before his time. If so, we wish you well. You are the only hope for mankind’s future, and we send you all our love.”
The Siirk were wide-eyed, mute, with mouths hanging open as they clustered around to hear this strange monologue.
Alex felt a frantic sweat on the back of his neck. What had happened to his ancestors? Why were they extinct? How had they managed to make him be born so far into the future? How far was this into the future? He was full of questions.
Maryan clung to him and helped him navigate through the menus.
The last thing he wanted was to send armed assistance to Nizin, but he had to produce something for them.
“Archive,” he said.
A different menu appeared, with hundreds of tiny pictures. He ran his finger along (Nizin imitating him by drawing a finger through the air) and the sound kept changing, until he came across Why Mankind Is Extinct. He repeated this clause, and the picture switched to a newsreel while an announcer spoke in voice-over.
Picture of a deserted city, windows broken, streets empty, papers blowing along, birds lined up on sagging telephone wires.
“After more than a million years of human progress, it took just one virus to destroy the human race.”
Wide shot of outer space, with the Milky Way majestically sprawling like a sea of light from one end to the other.
“The virus was too small to see or detect. It came stealthily, and it acted stealthily before anyone had any idea.”
Pictures of test tubes, microscope, genes, chromosomes, DNA double helix, stick and ball model of complex molecules...
“By the time science tracked down the cause of the spreading human irreversible infertility syndrome, or HIIS, it was too late.”
Picture of a busy European shopping mall, with men, women, and children thronging the busy stores.
“Humans were concentrated in huge urban centers, where the virus spread insidiously in two or three generations before being identified as HIIS.”
Montage shots of similar malls in China, India, the U.S., and Africa.
“Within 25 years, one can see the differece: an aging population, and fewer and fewer children because the birth rate is plummeting toward zero.”
Picture of a special school outside London, protected by barbed wire, high walls, and guards.
“A small number of humans appear to have an inherent immunity. Their children continue to be born, coveted by a vast population that has become sterile. For a while it looks as though mankind will carry on. Are these brave few souls a new super-race?”
Same school, looking depressingly deserted.
“Even these hardy genes cannot withstand the rapidly mutating virus that opportunistically assails human DNA wherever it finds it.”
Montage: police raiding buildings; grainy black and white footage.
“For many, the last days of mankind were an ordeal of looting, pillaging, and other crimes. Law and order broke down.”
Montage: scientists at work. All of them look frail, white-haired, as the last surviving humans age away.
“Scientists continued to the last day, looking for solutions. Some theorize that cloning, if postponed for a thousand years or more, can leapfrog the virus’s deadly assault on the Earth.”
Pictures of cells, bloodstream. Virus attacks cell, pokes a hole in it, spews its genetic material inside. Virus sloughs off and drifts away, spent.
“The attacking genetic strand attacks the chromosomes themselves, forever altering the message from which the human being is copied billions of times. Once the host has died out, the virus should become inert and possibly break apart over decades or centuries of lying in the soil, where the four seasons and other natural phenomena can destroy it.”
Picture of a newborn baby in a laboratory among test tubes.
“Here is Alvin Montfiori of Albano, Italy, born December 13, 2071. He is the last human being known to have been born alive. A variation of the virus, thought to have joined with influenza viruses, attacked and destroyed even those brave new humans born in vitro.”
Here the presentation went dead. It was enough to give Alex a good idea of how the human race had ended. Shaken, he stood back. What had they meant by “leapfrogging?” That must be the clones, engineered to appear thousands of years later.
Impatiently, Nizin began to bellow and bang on the sphere. “Geedeen!” he pointed up. It was clear he knew the thing could take him up into the sky. When he saw the look on Alex’s face, he seemed to relent, and signaled for Thuga to fetch food and drink for Alex and Maryan.
Meanwhile, a series of images rotated randomly on the screen. The President declared an emergency... children cried and went unfed... riots in the cities... families in mourning... cells trying to divide, and failing...
He rose and found another archive clip of interest to him (and he imagined these might still be beaming down from a source in orbit).
Thuga brought bowls of steaming soup and lumps of savory bread. Maryan and he ate their first warm meal in days while watching.
Picture of a building in a valley, scientists at work in a lab.
“This is Beacham University, where much of the final cloning research was carried out under an urgent Government program.”
Picture of interior of building: gleaming floors, high ceilings, tastefully decorated walls, men and women in white coats walking importantly.
“Here, in the only state of the art facility of its kind, scientists are racing to perfect an automatic cloning complex. This complex is considered mankind’s last hope, though many detractors don’t think it can possibly work.”
Picture of graduate students walking around campuses taking samples from cooperative, nodding young undergraduates.
“To avoid contamination with existing human cells, the source cells that will be used were taken around the turn of the millennium for earlier, unrelated genetic experiments, and left sealed in test tubes long before the HIIS outbreak.”
Picture of a long hallway. From a door on the right, a young man emerges. From a door on the left, a young woman emerges. Both are naked, their bodies airbrushed for modesty. They meet in the middle of the hall, link hands, and walk away.
“To further avoid the possibility of contamination, the project will not become active until the year 3500, when all humans are long gone, and their cells effectively destroyed. The cloning is expected to continue for up to one century and then dwindle after some 10,000 new humans have been created.”
Picture of birthing rooms with stone tubs, tubing, objects on walls.
“These 100% automatic birthing rooms will provide everything tomorrow’s children will need. A kind of benign fungus will provide bioluminescent heat. Multiple umbilical cords will feed blood and other nutrient fluids, including nano-engineered memory enzymes so that the clones can share the memories of their source individuals.”
Repeat picture of a long hallway. From a door on the right, a young man emerges. From a door on the left, a young woman emerges. Both are naked, their bodies airbrushed for modesty. They meet in the middle of the hall, link hands, and walk away.
“Each of these perfectly formed human beings will be created from a vast cocktail of genetic material to ensure a diverse, healthy, and robust gene pool.”
Maryan and he looked at each other and nearly laughed.
“It didn’t quite turn out that way,” she said, chewing her bread.
“Yeah.” He eyeballed their keepers. All but Omas had drifted off to rest from the noonday sun, or presumably for lunch someplace.
Alex rose stiffly and stretched. Feeling the need to relieve his bladder, he stepped down from the mound. Omas nearly had a heart attack, but relaxed when he made urinating motions. He glanced craftily at Maryan, no doubt noting that he wouldn’t run away without her.
As he wandered into the sun-dappled forest, he heard a noise—a deep, low groan of contentment.
There on his left, not twenty feet away, was a low-ceilinged cabin. It was curtained like the mystery boat.
Alex froze, compelled by curiosity.
The curtain blew aside in the wind.
Inside sat a Siirk with his back to the wall, holding something to his chest.
At first Alex thought it was a female, nursing a baby.
Then Alex recognized the face of a sleeping Thuga.
Only it wasn’t sleeping. The top of its head was missing, and the Siirk leaned his head forward to eat. The Siirk uttered another low, intense pleasure-thrum.
A twig cracked under Alex’s feet.
The curtain fell back, and Alex glimpsed the Siirk’s expression flown apart in a hiss of deadly rage.
But the Siirk left Alex alone, because the Siirk probably knew Nizin would torture him to death if he harmed Alex at this time.
Alex returned to the sphere, shaken. It took him an hour or so to realize he’d forgotten to do what he’d gone there for.
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