The fourth day found spirits even lower. Commander Scott began to wonder if a more theoretical approach might give results. He stepped outside and looked at the barren wasteland, littered with the skeletal remains of ancient buildings and, of course, the giant pig statue. A desperate spark of an idea suddenly came to him. He began working equations in his head and came up with a plan so incredibly, ridiculously improbable that it might just work.
He returned to the ship and assembled the team (which took a lot less time than it used to). He cleared his throat. “I have a plan. It may not work, but our choices seem to be limited to this or sit here until we run out of provisions.” He paused for Josephs to stop whimpering.
“I want to reroute the computer power into a cable and run it out to that bronze pig. Then, using dissonant frequency modulation, I can reverse the polarity of the bronze nuclei and create a sub-harmonic field to attract chroniton particles. A high-density accumulation of chroniton particles will create a fractal temporal anomaly. If we activate the ship force field while the ship is entering the anomaly, the force field will prevent the ship from synchronizing with the new time. So the ship will essentially function as an anti-Higgs field.”
He looked at the four men, waiting for a reaction. They stared back blankly. Josephs looked at the other men and then at Scott. “Could you go over that last part again? Start with the ‘run a cable to the pig’ thing.”
Scott sighed and dumbed it down. “The electrified pig will create a time bubble around the ship. The ship will be inside the bubble. If the ship is already in a force field when we enter the bubble, it will have no mass. If it has no mass, it has no weight. If it has no weight, it will start to float. Once we’re clear of the ground, we can fire the main thrusters and fly home. Once we’re clear of the radiation field, we can radio Luna Control and they can have a tractor beam waiting to grab us.”
This time, the men grasped enough of the concept to realize they might get back to the moon in one piece, even if the specific details were completely incomprehensible. Scott decided to avoid mentioning the fact that chronitons were a theoretical construct that had never been proven, and if it worked, there was no guarantee they would survive the main engine ignition in a planetary gravity field.
The computer power was quickly routed to a cable. As Commander Scott strapped himself into the pilot chair and monitored the chroniton concentrations, Lectra ran the cable out to the bronze statue and then rushed back to the ship and strapped in for launch. Josephs, determined not to repeat his last mistake, stood vigilantly at the window looking for mountains.
Scott carefully watched the monitor and was amazed to see the chroniton particle density was beginning to climb. He turned on the force field. Almost immediately, the ship gently lurched sideways. Josephs screeched that they were floating and leaped for his chair. Unfortunately for Josephs, the whole “no mass, no weight” part was not a clear concept. His weightless leap resulted in Josephs bouncing off the walls like a giant screeching pinball, quickly developing a better, albeit bruised, grasp of Newtonian physics. The crew could only watch in amazement as the sociologist careened across the cabin, assuming “amazement” was a euphemism for laughing so hard their helmets were fogging up. Unfortunately, Josephs hit the emergency override for the cargo bay door on a particularly spectacular cartwheel off the ceiling. As the air rushed out of the compartment, the silence was fortuitous, as no one could hear an unidentified sound that would have been suspiciously similar to that of a sociologist soiling his e-suit (or the aftermath of Venusian Chili night, but again, that’s a different story). On a return bounce, he went soaring out of the cabin, out of the chroniton bubble, and landed helmet-first in the freeze-dried remains of the rest of the crew he had never gotten around to burying.
Unaware of the drama in the compartment behind him, Scott hit the button and the main engines roared to life. The transport blasted across the sky as Paulsen hit the switch to seal the cargo hatch. His last view of the sociologist was a gloved hand flipping the bird to the departing shuttle as the hatch slowly closed.
On the Terran surface, the fractal bubble began collapsing in on itself as soon as the ship moved away. The pig returned to being just a bronze monument to an industry that died 2 millennia before. The chroniton field collapsed and formed a gravity well that quickly became a miniature black hole.
Josephs, cursing at the sky, was sucked into the black hole, collapsing him into a single atom of heavy matter at the center. As the chroniton particles quickly decayed, the black hole closed in on itself and the heavy matter formerly known as the sociologist was thrown backward through time.
Scott’s minor miscalculation on chroniton dispersal patterns was compounded by the tiny detail that any matter going backward in time was technically anti-matter. The anti-matter atom was expelled 2423 years back in time, approximately 42 kilometers east of Carlsbad, New Mexico. Unfortunately for the planet, 42 kilometers east of Carlsbad, New Mexico was home to the US military’s Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, a repository of spent reactor rods and other radioactive material. The resulting anti-matter explosion atomized most of the New Mexico desert as well as the WIPP complex, freeing the radioactivity to ride the shockwave across the globe in seconds. It probably would have started World War V except that when the shock waves slammed into itself on the far side of the planet, it propelled the planet forward like a bullet out of a gun, leaving the atmosphere and oceans behind. Generally speaking, it was the worst planetary disaster since the Brittney Spears Come Back Tour of 2041, but quicker and less painful.
***
After rescuing the surviving explorers, the Luna Science Council decided that perhaps it was prudent to table the mystery for a few decades and concentrate on new projects, such as terraforming Mars. The Science Council hated mysteries but loved new projects, especially expensive ones. Attention was turned from the dead planet of Earth to the equally dead but significantly less radioactive Mars.
Each year, on the anniversary of their legendary escape from Earth, the four surviving explorers meet for dinner and toast their fallen comrades. Occasionally, Dr. Josephs’ name comes up in the conversation too.
And not by coincidence, that is the one day each year that the Science Council dining room menu does not offer a pork entree.
The Last Dog
Mike Resnick
The Dog—old, mangy, his vertebrae forming little ridges beneath the slack skin that covered his gaunt body—trotted through the deserted streets, nose to the ground. He was missing half an ear and most of his tail, and caked blood covered his neck like a scarf. He may have been gold once, or light brown, but now he looked like an old red brick, even down to the straw and mud that clung to those few portions of his body which still retained any hair at all.
Since he had no true perception of the passage of time, he had no idea when he had last eaten—except that it had been a long time ago. A broken radiator in an automobile graveyard had provided water for the past week, and kept him in the area long after the last of the rusty, translucent liquid was gone.
He was panting now, his breath coming in a never-ending series of short spurts and gasps. His sides ached, his eyes watered, and every now and then he would trip over the rubble of the decayed and ruined buildings that lined the tortuously fragmented street. The toes of his feet were covered by sores and calluses, and both his dew claws had long since been torn off.
He continued trotting, occasionally shivering from the cold breeze that whistled down the streets of the lifeless city. Once he saw a rat, but a premature whine of hunger had sent it scurrying off into the debris before he could catch it, and so he trotted, his stride a little shorter, his chest hurting a little more, searching for sustenance so that he would live another day to hunt again and eat again and live still another day.
Then suddenly he froze, his mud-caked nostrils testing the wind, the pitiful stump of a tail held rigidly behind him. He remained motionless for almost a minute, except for a spa
smodic quivering in one foreleg, then slunk into the shadows and advanced silently down the street.
He emerged at what had once been an intersection, stared at the thing across the street from him, and blinked. His eyesight, none too good even in the days of his youth and health, was insufficient to the task, and so he inched forward, belly to ground, flecks of saliva falling onto his chest.
The Man heard a faint shuffling sound and looked into the shadows, a segment of an old two-by-four in his hand. He, too, was gaunt and dirty, his hair unkempt, four teeth missing and another one half rotted away. His feet were wrapped in old rags, and the only thing that held his clothes together was the dirt.
"Who's there?" he said in a rasping voice.
The Dog, fangs bared, moved out from between buildings and began advancing, a low growl rumbling in his throat. The Man turned to face him, strengthening his grip on his makeshift warclub. They stopped when they were fifteen feet apart, tense and unmoving. Slowly the Man raised his club to striking position; slowly the Dog gathered his hind legs beneath him.
Then, without warning, a rat raced out of the debris and ran between them. Savage cries escaped the lips of both the Dog and the Man. The Dog pounced, but the Man's stick was even faster; it flew through the air and landed on the rat's back, pulping it to the ground and killing it instantly.
The Man walked forward to retrieve his weapon and his prey. As he reached down, the Dog emitted a low growl. The Man stared at him for a long moment; then, very slowly, very carefully, he picked up one end of the stick. He sawed with the other end against the smashed body of the rat until it split in half, and shoved one pulpy segment toward the Dog. The Dog remained motionless for a few seconds, then lowered his head, grabbed the blood-spattered piece of flesh and tissue, and raced off across the street with it. He stopped at the edge of the shadows, lay down, and began gnawing at his grisly meal. The Man watched him for a moment, then picked up his half of the rat, squatted down like some million-years-gone progenitor, and did the same.
When his meal was done the Man belched once, walked over to the still-standing wall of a building, sat with his back against it, laid his two-by-four across his thighs, and stared at the Dog. The Dog, licking forepaws that would never again be clean, stared back.
They slept thus, motionless, in the ghost city. When the Man awoke the next morning he arose, and the Dog did likewise. The Man balanced his stick across his shoulder and began walking, and after a moment the Dog followed him. The Man spent most of the day walking through the city, looking into the soft innards of stores and shops, occasionally cursing as dead store after dead store refused to yield up shoes, or coats, or food. At twilight he built a small fire in the rubble and looked around for the Dog, but could not find it.
The man slept uneasily and awoke some two hours before sunrise. The Dog was sleeping about twenty feet away from him. The Man sat up abruptly, and the Dog, startled, raced off. Ten minutes later he was back, stopping about eighty feet distant, ready to race away again at an instant's warning, but back nonetheless.
The Man looked at the Dog, shrugged, and began walking in a northerly direction. By midday he had reached the outskirts of the city and, finding the ground soft and muddy, he dug a hole with his hands and his stick. He sat down next to it and waited as water slowly seeped into it. Finally he reached his hands down, cupping them together, and drew the precious fluid up to his lips. He did this twice more, then began walking again. Some instinct prompted him to turn back, and he saw the Dog eagerly lapping up what water remained.
He made another kill that night, a medium-sized bird that had flown into the second-floor room of a crumbling hotel and couldn't remember how to fly out before he pulped it. He ate most of it, put the rest into what remained of a pocket, and walked outside. He threw it on the ground and the Dog slunk out of the shadows, still tense but no longer growling. The Man sighed, returned to the hotel, and climbed up to the second floor. There were no rooms with windows intact, but he did find one with half a mattress remaining, and he collapsed upon it.
When he awoke, the Dog was lying in the doorway, sleeping soundly.
They walked, a little closer this time, through the remains of the forest that was north of the city. After they had proceeded about a dozen miles, they found a small stream that was not quite dry and drank from it, the Man first and then the Dog. That night the man lit another fire and the Dog lay down on the opposite side of it. The next day, the Dog killed a small, undernourished squirrel. He did not share it with the Man, but neither did he growl or bare his teeth as the Man approached. That night the Man killed an opossum, and they remained in the area for two days, until the last of the marsupial's flesh had been consumed.
They walked north for almost two weeks, making an occasional kill, finding an occasional source of water. Then one night it rained, and there was no fire, and the Man sat, arms hugging himself, beneath a large tree. Soon the Dog approached him, sat about four feet away, and then slowly, ever so slowly, inched forward as the rain struck his flanks. The Man reached out absently and stroked the Dog's neck. It was their first physical contact, and the Dog leaped back, snarling. The Man withdrew his hand and sat motionless, and soon the Dog moved forward again.
After a period of time that might have been ten minutes or perhaps two hours, the Man reached out once more, and this time, although the Dog trembled and tensed, he did not pull away. The Man's long fingers slowly moved up the sore-covered neck, scratched behind the torn ears, gently stroked the scarred head. Finally the Man withdrew his hand and rolled over on his side. The Dog looked at him for a moment, then sighed and laid up against his emaciated body.
The Man awoke the next morning to the feeling of something warm and scaly pressed into his hand. It was not the cool, moist nose of the dogs of literature, because this was not a dog of literature. This was the Last Dog, and he was the Last Man, and if they looked less than heroic, at least there was no one around to see and bemoan how the mighty had fallen.
The Man patted the Dog's head, arose, stretched, and began walking. The Dog trotted at his side, and, for the first time in many years, the nub of his tail moved rapidly from side to side. They hunted and ate and drank and slept, then repeated the procedure again and again.
And then they came to the Other.
The Other looked like neither Man nor Dog, nor like anything else of earth, as indeed it was not. It had come from beyond Centauri, beyond Arcturus, past Antares. from deep at the core of the galaxy, where the stars pressed so close together that nightfall never came. It had come, and had seen, and had conquered.
"You!" hissed the Man, holding his stick at the ready.
"You are the last," said the Other. "For six years I have scoured and scourged the face of this planet, for six years I have eaten alone and slept alone and lived alone and hunted down the survivors of the war one by one, and you are the last. There is only you to be slain, and then I may go home."
And, so saying, it withdrew a weapon that looked strangely like a pistol, but wasn't.
The Man crouched and prepared to hurl his stick, but even as he did so, a brick-red, scarred, bristling engine of destruction hurtled past him, leaping through space for the Other. The Other touched what passed for a belt, made a quick gesture in the air, and the Dog bounced back off of something that was invisible, unsensible, but tangible.
Then, very slowly, almost casually, the Other pointed its weapon at the Man. There was no explosion, no flash of light, no whirring of gears, but suddenly the Man grasped his throat and fell to the ground.
The Dog got up and limped painfully over to the Man. He nuzzled his face, whined once, and pawed at his body, trying to turn it over.
"It is no use," said the Other, although its lips no longer moved. "He was the last, and now he is dead."
The Dog whined again, and pushed the Man's lifeless head with his muzzle.
"Come, Animal," said the Other wordlessly. "Come with me and I shall feed you and tend to your wo
unds."
I will stay with the Man, said the Dog, also wordlessly.
"But he is dead," said the Other. "Soon you will grow hungry and weak."
I was hungry and weak before, said the Dog.
The Other took a step forward, but stopped as the Dog bared his teeth and growled.
"He was not worth your loyalty," said the Other.
He was my—The Dog's brain searched for a word, but the concept it sought was complex far beyond its meager abilities to formulate. He was my friend.
"He was my enemy," said the Other. "He was petty and barbarous and unscrupulous and all that is worst in a sentient being. He was Man."
Yes, said the Dog. He was Man. With another whimper, he lay down beside the body of the Man and rested his head on its chest.
"There are no more," said the Other. "And soon you will leave him."
The Dog looked up at the Other and snarled again, and then the Other was gone and the Dog was alone with the Man. He licked him and nuzzled him and stood guard over him for two days and two nights, and then, as the Other had said he would, he left to hunt for food and water.
And he came to a valley of fat, lazy rabbits and cool, clear ponds, and he ate and drank and grew strong, and his wounds began to scab over and heal, and his coat grew long and luxuriant.
And because he was only a Dog, it was not too long before he forgot that there had ever been such a thing as a Man, except on those chilly nights when he lay alone beneath a tree in the valley and dreamt of a bond that had been forged by a gentle touch upon the head or a soft word barely audible above the crackling of a small fire.
And, being a Dog, one day he forgot even that, and assumed that the emptiness within him came only from hunger. And when he grew old and feeble and sick, he did not seek out the Man's barren bones and lie down to die beside them, but rather he dug a hole in the damp earth near the pond and lay there, his eyes half closed, a numbness setting in at his extremities and working its way slowly toward his heart.
Alternative Apocalypse Page 9