Last Human

by Doug Naylor

  Dash, dot, dot, dot... 'B...'

  Dash, dot, dot, dot... 'B... again.' Dot, dot, dash, dot... 'F...'

  Dash, dot, dot, dot. 'B...'

  The bee clicked off. 'S. M. A. K. I. B. B. F. B?'

  'Smakibbfb? What does that mean?' asked the Cat. 'Maybe the muffle programme's poisoned his system too early,' said Kochanski.

  Lister shook his head. 'S. M. A. K. I. B. B. F. B. Smoke me a kipper, I'll be back for breakfast.' McGruder smiled.

  The bee transferred back to its flight programme and powered into the heart of the Rage.

  Nothing happened.

  They watched in silence.

  Nothing.

  Silence.

  Then the Rage erupted in an extended volley of blood black explosions that lacerated the plain. Gargantuan lightbulbs of fire plumed skyward, accompanied by the agonized screechings of a million dying creatures; all the Gelfs who'd been forced to surrender their lives and their identities to create the gestalt, all had been poisoned by recrimination and resentment, all had vented their spleen through the power of the gestalt, but now their fury was over. Their pain had ended. They were free to die.

  The Rage was dead.

  * * *

  The gravity winds smashed Lister and the others against the rock face as they ran along the mountain pathway towards the sanctuary of the caverns. Once in, they ran past falling boulders and schisming floors, past breaking stalactites and flooding underground rivers, deeper and deeper, farther and farther into the ground. Finally, the planet was hauled into the aureole of black holes and a series of tremors hurtled through the subterranean chambers sending massive chasms zigzagging towards them. Leaping left and right and left again they continued their flight into the planet's core until the gravitational pummelling the planet was receiving from the Omni-zone was nothing but a distant rumbling.

  CHAPTER 20

  It took them three weeks to burrow their way to the surface. Surviving on subterranean fauna, they bored through fallen boulders, dug their way past mudslides and avalanches of clay, until finally, having navigated their way round countless flooded chambers and fled from more disintegrating ceilings than anyone could remember, they chiselled away a final piece of rock and staggered into daylight.

  Lister gazed skyward. A bashful sun hung back behind a gang of cloud. He filled his lungs with air. It smelt as fresh as ice. They had made the crossing into a new dimension; which dimension it was impossible to tell.

  'Look.'

  Kochanski pointed down the length of the canyon. Rivers crossed and skipped along its length like playful children. The first signs of a new, greener kind of vegetation were beginning to peek through the sandy soil.

  They staggered around in groups of two and threes, holding on to one another and grinning. Finally they broke apart.

  Kryten pulled the healer disk from his belt pocket and tapped it quizzically against his chest plate. Then, wordlessly he started towards the caverns that the Rage had once guarded with such venom, trailed by the Cat, McGruder and Reketrebn. Their heads stooped low, brows furrowed, they scoured the ground looking for a small dead light bee.

  Lister looked at Kochanski through panda eyes. 'We're home.'

  She kissed him. 'I know.'

  They clambered down the canyon and started to walk alongside a chirpy flood river that gambolled across the valley. Past the purple flowers of meadow saffron. It felt like it was spring.

  She looked at him. And squeezed his hand.

  'Don't think that.'

  'Think what?'

  'That we've got all this and what's the point if we can't have kids.'

  He smiled a heavy smile.

  'We don't need kids to make us happy, hon. We're not incomplete without them. We've got us.'

  He smiled. 'I know.'

  'But?'

  'But I just feel I screwed it up. I had a responsibility to restart the human race and I blew it.'

  'Let me show you something.' She tugged off her loosely buttoned mauve shirt and pulled her T-shirt over her head until she was down to just her jogging bra. 'You know you never plan ahead. You live for now and hope everything works itself out. Personally, I think that's kind of cute but then I have major character flaws of my own.'

  'What are you talking about?'

  'Planning ahead. You never do.' She grinned. 'Lucky then you got yourself entangled with a gal who does.' She slipped her hand into her bra cup and pulled out a small, one-inch vial. 'You've also got a memory like a sieve. I took a second vial of luck virus, remember?'

  A slow smile started to break across Lister's face.

  'I can see you're ahead of me.' She took a swig and handed it to Lister. 'Here's the deal.' She picked up two flat stones and handed one to him. 'If we can both skim these two stones down the river so that they each bounce seven times and wind up in that little ox-bow pond over there, it means...' She pointed to the edge of the canyon where a skirt of sorghum grass was swaying in the breeze. 'When we hit the long grass over there we're going to wind up making the first of our many children.'

  Lister swigged from the luck virus.

  'You ready?'

  He nodded. 'I'm ready.'

  They took aim and fired. The pebbles landed simultaneously and perfectly on the surface of the river. They bounced once, twice, three times, two feet apart and still in perfect unison.

  Four times, five times, still together.

  Six times, still in absolute synchronicity, almost as if they were bound together by some invisible cord.

  Seven times. Still as one.

  Up they went a final time before they touched down in the little ox-bow pond in a harmonious chord of simultaneous plops.

  Lister and Kochanski swivelled and looked at one another, wearing monkey grins that were almost too big to fit on their faces. They hugged and screamed and yelled and hollered. Then gradually the grin faded from Lister's face. He picked her up in his arms and stared into her eyes. He was disembowelled by her diamond brightness, he was mesmerized by her beauty.

  She kissed him on his bottom lip.

  He started to carry her across the canyon towards the leaning choirs of tall grass. He carried her over the streams, over the sand estuary, past the meadow saffron until finally they were there, walking through the yellow blades of maize. They melted down into the sorghum grass and disappeared from view.

  Slowly, gently, almost imperceptibly, the grass began to sway.