The Last Man on Earth Club

by Paul R. Hardy

  Since then, she’s avoided any kind of activity other than complaining about her medication (though her cirrhosis is firmly under control), the lack of good food and drink (though we have plenty of both, excepting alcohol of course), the other patients, the staff, or any one of the dozen things a day that irritate her. And meanwhile, she does everything she can to irritate and exasperate everyone else. Her favourite tactic seems to be to fall asleep in the lounge during the day and snore at a remarkably high volume; she doesn’t sleep much at night, so this comes easily to her. She also has a cavalier attitude to personal hygiene. Her sense of smell seems to be quite atrophied (though she claims she just ignores odours rather than admitting to any deficiency). While it doesn’t trouble me, I’ve had to beg her to wash for the sake of the others, which usually takes about twenty minutes of argument before she finally gets in a shower.

  3. Gardening

  Our next group activity was more subtle and less immediate than making a meal. Veofol suggested we give them something they could view as a long term pastime, and came up with some suggestions. I chose gardening. We had a well tended lawn in front of the main building, with some basic landscaping and a few simple flowerbeds, but the meadow between the back of the building and the forest was largely undisturbed, and it was this area we cleared and prepared for the group.

  Iokan was first out, drawn by the sound of turf being sliced away from the ground. “Doing a spot of gardening?” he asked.

  I grinned back. “No. You are.”

  He blinked and looked out over the newly cleared soil. The groundskeeper’s voice rang out from the turf cutter, asking if we needed any trees felling. I assured him that wouldn’t be necessary and asked if he could bring out the supplies.

  Iokan asked, “Are we growing our own food?”

  “Only if you want to,” I said. “You can plant flowers if you like. It’s a garden for all of you to work on together.”

  “I’ve never done any gardening before…” he said, in the tone of someone just discovering a fresh and interesting challenge.

  “You should go back inside and put on some clothes you don’t mind getting dirty,” I said. “I’ll call everyone out in a few minutes.” And, as the groundskeeper pushed a floating toolstore and seedbank up to the edge of the cleared ground and anchored it there, the rest of them responded to my summons and came out to see what was going on. Olivia brought a chair and sat down underneath her straw hat.

  I explained what we had for them — about twenty square metres of land they could use to cultivate anything they wished (so long as it was permitted on Hub) plus all the tools they might need (though nothing that would make it too easy or automate the work). Kwame had an appointment later in the afternoon, but the rest of them could spend the day in the garden if they wished.

  “So can we grow flowers?” asked Liss.

  “Anything you want,” I assured her.

  “Can we grow fruit?” asked Pew. He knew from experience how hard it was to get real fruit on Hub.

  “As long as it doesn’t involve planting a tree,” I said. “That might take a bit too long.”

  “What about poppies?” asked Olivia.

  “I think there are a few varieties on the list,” I said.

  “How about the medicinal kind?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Oh, well, in that case, I’ll sit here and watch you all enjoying yourselves.”

  “No doubt you will be offering comments,” said Kwame.

  “I’ll just sit in the middle and you can dig around me,” she said, pulling down the brim of her hat.

  Kwame narrowed his eyes. Olivia was good at motivating him, albeit for the wrong reasons. “What seeds do we have?” he asked.

  “Take a look at the list,” I said, handing over a pad and passing out more to the others. I also dropped one in Olivia’s lap, which she ignored.

  The group gathered around Kwame and discussed what they wanted to grow. Liss wanted as many flowers as possible, and Kwame agreed that some flowers would be a good idea. Pew showed agricultural leanings and wanted not just fruit, but a whole vegetable garden. Kwame also thought that vegetables would be useful. Iokan suggested they landscape the area with lawns as well as the flower and vegetable plots. Kwame agreed with him too, but the others didn’t want a lawn or landscaping; the grounds already had plenty of that.

  The group seemed to look naturally to Kwame to take a lead, and he had a gravitas that lent itself to that assumption. But either he couldn’t speak fast enough to keep up with them, or his leadership skills were damaged along with his brain. He grew irritated, and his only good idea was to vote on it, which of course got nowhere.

  Olivia had been snoring away in a fitful doze, and I didn’t notice her wake up and take a desultory look through the seed list. It was only later, when I reviewed the recordings, that I saw her sit bolt upright in her chair as she came to a certain entry; then get to her feet and head over to rifle through the seed bins. Veofol noticed, went over and asked her what she was doing.

  “It’s flax mustard!” she exclaimed.

  Veofol looked at the listing. “Yellow mustard grass? Are you sure?”

  “You can call it what you like, but sniff that!” She held out a handful of seeds. Veofol inhaled their scent, but he had very little sense of smell at the best of times. By this point, I’d made my own way over, and Olivia demanded I take a sniff too. To me, they were pungent and vile. I staggered back, coughing at the stench.

  “There might be a problem,” said Veofol. “Look at this.” He gave me the pad, and showed me the warning: while it came up with pretty yellow flowers prized by some garden designers, yellow mustard grass also contained isothiocyanates, which were deadly poison to some human species.

  “Olivia, are you intending to grow this for food?” I asked.

  “Now there’s an idea…” She took up a lungful of their scent with the greatest pleasure.

  “You do know it’s poisonous for some people?”

  “That’s fine. I won’t share.” She breathed in the stench once more. “I haven’t had this since we ran out at Tringarrick…”

  “I’m serious, Olivia. If there’s anyone in the group who can be hurt by this, I’ll have every seed dug up and destroyed.”

  “Yeh. Poisonous. You said.” She looked round at the still-ongoing squabble. “Huh. Right.” She rolled up her sleeves (quite literally) and strode over to the group.

  “All right, SHUT UP. Here’s what we’re going to do.” They looked round, surprised to see her on her feet. “We’re going to have a mixed flower and vegetable garden. Flowers on the borders and fruit and veg inside. We’re going to mark out plots and pick what goes in ’em. You,” she said to Liss, “pick five flowers and no more. Got that? Five. You,” she said to Pew, “pick ten fruit and veg. The first one’s yellow mustard grass and then whatever you like. You two,” she said to Iokan and Kwame, “help me get the tools.”

  Kwame bristled. “I would like to have some say in the choice of—”

  “You had a say, and all you did was talk. Get the bloody tools.”

  Kwame looked furious, but the argument was prevented by a soft chime in my ear. “Kwame,” I said, “I think your advocate’s ready. She’s a bit early but would you like to have your meeting?”

  “I would,” he said. Veofol accompanied him back to the centre and the remote meeting room.

  “Are you going to help?” Olivia demanded of Iokan.

  “Sure. Lead the way,” he said, a little amused, and followed her to the floating toolshed.

  A couple of hours later, it was clear that Olivia knew what she was doing. She sketched a layout on a pad, and used stakes and twine to mark out flower and vegetable beds with Iokan’s help (though I think she could have done everything herself without taking much longer). She came back to me with questions about the condition of the earth, the local rainfall, the climate in general, and demanded a test for soil pH, which came out at a very p
romising 6.2. While she waited for that, I made sure none of the group would be likely to die from contact with her precious mustard grass. By that time, the others had picked what else they wanted to plant, and she directed the group to prepare the ground, turning over the sod and exposing fresh soil beneath. It was the first time I’d seen her take pleasure in something that wasn’t vindictive, and it was clear she’d learnt her skills on more than the barren soil of the Tringarrick research station.

  Pew tried to show Liss how to dig her allotted section, though she was slow to learn. But Pew’s own work was fast and good. He explained that he’d spent a lot of time in the zoo’s vegetable garden during his childhood, and made excellent time, planting a number of crops before the day was out. Olivia even paid his work a grudging compliment.

  Kwame was brought back out by Veofol, looking even more grave than usual. I asked him how his meeting had gone.

  “My case has been postponed indefinitely,” he said. “They say there is no body competent to investigate my claims, because the Interversal Criminal Tribunal is not fully convened.”

  “I see.”

  “This is bureaucracy at work. The only people who can judge me are allowed to judge no one.”

  “Well, the ICT is the only body that might be able to look into a genocide. But they’re also supposed to investigate claims of interference between one universe and another, and that’s rather controversial. It’s only there in a shadow capacity until the IU decides whether or not to activate it.”

  “And when will that be?”

  “It’s a tricky political question,” I said. “Some member species are against it in principle.”

  “And how many worlds did they murder?”

  “The issues aren’t quite that extreme,” I said. “They’re more worried about what the IU would have to become if we started making judgements, or they’d prefer we didn’t interfere in their affairs. You should probably do your own research on this, or we can discuss it in group if you like.”

  “That will change nothing…” He looked back at the main building and said: “How long has she been there?”

  I followed his look. Katie stood by the side of the building, watching the others while they worked.

  “That’s a good question,” I said. It turned out she had emerged half an hour earlier and moved to a shadow to watch. I called her name and asked if she wanted a chair. She didn’t reply. I sent Veofol. He spoke to her briefly, then came back looking puzzled.

  “Rather odd,” he said. “I asked her but she didn’t answer for about a minute. Then she said she didn’t need anything.”

  “She is a machine. Why do you keep her here?” asked Kwame.

  “She needs help as much as the rest of you.” I turned to Veofol. “Is she all right now?”

  “Seems as well as ever,” said Veofol.

  “Let me know if she does anything similar,” I said.

  Olivia, meanwhile, was losing patience with Liss. With the natural strength of her species and her own clumsiness, she repeatedly made a mess of preparing a plot. After finishing a section of her own, Olivia was incensed to discover that Liss had been digging too deep. Olivia told her she wasn’t supposed to be excavating foundations. Liss protested that she didn’t know how to do this, and why were they doing it themselves anyway when they had all sorts of tools that could float in and do it for them? That made Olivia particularly angry; she told Liss they were doing it because it needed to be done and she wasn’t going to get any of her precious flowers without it. Liss said that was stupid and she was going to go and get mechanical help. Olivia told her exactly what she thought of her — she was lazy, she’d never done a day’s work in her life, she sat on her backside while other people did all the hard work, and so on. Liss responded by calling Olivia a mean old bitch, flinging her tools down and leaving the garden in a huff. I sent Veofol after her, decided a short break was called for, and had a word with Olivia about tact, though I only got muttering and grumbles in reply.

  As they rested with water, Pew asked a question. “Can we get chickens?”

  “What’s a chicken?” asked Iokan.

  “What do you mean, ‘what’s a chicken?’” demanded Olivia.

  “They probably don’t exist on Iokan’s world,” I said.

  “How can you have a world without chickens?” she asked, incredulous.

  Iokan shrugged. “The Antecessors only left us with certain animals. This ‘chicken’ wasn’t one of them. What are they?”

  “Flightless birds used for meat and eggs,” I told him.

  “Yeah, but can we get some?” asked Pew.

  “I think you know the answer to that.”

  “Oh, so we can grow vegetables but we still have to eat machine meat?” said Olivia.

  “I don’t understand,” said Iokan. “What’s the problem with chickens?”

  “It’s a biodiversity precaution,” I said. “We’re all aliens here. We don’t want other species to get loose and take over the planet. That’s why all the plants are infertile. They’ll come up with seeds, but the seeds won’t grow. We’d do the same to animals, but it’s a lot more trouble and they tend to have minds of their own. Plus they bring a lot more microorganisms with them. So, no chickens. Sorry.”

  “I see,” said Iokan. “Actually…” He looked around, and tilted his head to listen as well. “I haven’t seen any animals since I’ve been here, beyond a few insects…”

  “No,” I said. “You wouldn’t.”

  “It’s summer… there should be birds everywhere. And animals in the woods, and more insects as well…” He looked around again. “Something happened here, didn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed.

  “Something that wiped out the birds.”

  I nodded. “There was an asteroid strike about forty thousand years ago. Most of the plants survived, and a lot of insects, but the megafauna didn’t make it. It’s one of the reasons the IU picked Hub; it’s somewhere we can minimise our impact.”

  “And humans?” he asked.

  “They died out, too.”

  He sighed. “We should get back to work.” He stood, but was immediately unsteady. “Ah…”

  I went to help him. “Okay, I think you’ve probably had enough exercise for one day.”

  “You may be right,” he said. I called for a nurse to take him inside, and asked Kwame if he wanted to help the group. He took a look at Olivia, who smiled contemptuously, and then decided not to bother. I took him back inside and let Olivia and Pew get back to the garden on their own, with only Katie watching them for reasons she kept to herself.

  4. Asha

  The gardening was a step in the right direction, but only a limited one. Olivia monopolised the task, and Pew was the only one willing to work with her the next day. Iokan was instructed to rest — he was recovering fast, but still needed to take it easy.

  Despite the odd cautious friendship formed here and there, the group still failed to come together. They found it too easy to retreat into their rooms and hide in the company of nothing but their own troubles. We could have housed them all in dormitories, but the ability to spend time alone was vital for therapy in other ways. So we were stuck for the moment, and it looked like I would have to resort to more serious measures.

  Back at home, I’d finally convinced Bell he wasn’t going to be able to interview any of the group, and, as he often did, he skipped onto another subject without bothering to resolve the last one, leaving me irritated while be bounded into a new enthusiasm without a note of apology. We went out into the city for drinks in one of the more traditional bars where staff from the Diplomatic Service go to complain of the burden of their work, and he proposed we spend a week away together. Maybe skiing, or a beach trip — he’d heard of the new resort on the Gulf coast that had opened up, in distant sight of the Lift. It was his way of saying sorry and making an effort, I suppose. He was crestfallen when I had to remind him there was no way I could take a week off. An evening o
ut was as much holiday as I was likely to get for the next year, at least. I probably shouldn’t have told him that my plans for the group meant I would be going away with them for a week or so as well. He took that as something of a deliberate insult, and went very quiet for a while. The evening ended with neither of us saying much, and me feeling relieved to be going back to work in the morning.

  PART FOUR — TEAM BUILDING

  1. Orienteering

  Somewhere in the tangled forest between mountain peaks lay the first waypoint; not impossible to find, but not easy either. The group would have to work together to get there. Dressed in practical hiking gear, they huddled around Kwame to look at the map, displayed on a large-format foldable pad and weighted down on a tree stump. This was no cartoon trail guide but a detailed professional map showing the paths, watercourses and bridges through the woods, and the occasional geographical feature like an impassable gorge slashed into the landscape.

  Kwame tapped a symbol on the map with a wavering finger. “So our task is to reach this rock here.”

  They looked up. Over the tops of the trees, an upthrust slab of granite poked out of the canopy. An easy enough landmark by itself, but one they would not be able to see once they left the clearing at the edge of the forest where the bus had dropped them.

  Kwame indicated a list of co-ordinates on a window to one edge of the map. “And we should have to reach these checkpoints in order to do so.”

  “But those are just numbers!” said Liss. Her choice of outfit for the excursion made some concessions to practicality, but still had far too many pink bobbles.

  “Grid references,” said Iokan. “Seems quite simple.” He’d switched his monk-like robe for something much more functional: a black polo-neck sweater, heavy walking boots, hard-wearing trousers and a jacket whose many pockets he’d filled with dozens of tools and gadgets.

  “Haven’t you ever read a map before, girl?” demanded Olivia.