Countdown to Extinction

by Louise Moss

  When he was gone, Emma said, “There’s something odd about that Bernard. Why does he look like Hagan? Is it another illusion?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps they’re brothers, like you said.”

  “He didn’t ask about Hagan.”

  “And another thing. Those people all have weird names. Have you ever heard of one called Bernard?”

  The next day, Gerald shared his vision for the future with the others. “Most people were dissatisfied with their old life. They were never happy with what they had, but always wanted more. I’d like to think things won’t go that way again.”

  Pete looked guilty. He had hankered after a sports car, driving himself hard to earn the money, missing out on what was important, time spent with his wife and children. He was far happier pottering about, building what was needed, having time for Shapsu when she was alive. The thought brought a tear to his eyes. Christine reached over and took his hand. She would tell him later that he was going to be a Dad again.

  “I want people to do the things they are good at, whether it is painting a picture or producing food, everything valued the same,” Gerald said.

  “There were always people who left everything to other people and didn’t contribute themselves,” Richard said, “but if we don’t have money to reward people, what incentive is there to work?”

  “My Mum never went to work,” Emma said. “She was always there when I went home from school, but some of my friends had to get their own dinner. They didn’t like that.”

  “That’s a good point,” Gerald said. He had never expected Margaret to go out to work when they had children, but some of his friends had other ideas. “Bringing up children is the most important thing there is. Without it, there is no society.”

  June said, “I had a friend who used to paint pictures. She was quite good, but there were so many people doing the same thing, she found it hard to sell them. Here, she would be famous, a painting on everyone’s wall.”

  “That’s the sort of thing I mean. We can use everyone’s skills, whatever they are.”

  Christine nodded. With no radio or television, anyone who could play a musical instrument would be highly valued.

  Before going home, they checked on the barn. There was no sign of Bernard. He had left the casserole dish on top of a hay bale. It looked as if he had licked it clean.

  While the Primitives had been away, Hagan had investigated the items in the store rooms, walking through many miles of corridors, sickened at the way the Primitives had wasted the Earth’s resources by turning them into so many useless items. He still had not reached the end after several hours.

  He assembled the essential things that would be needed for fifty houses in a trailer and added books, musical instruments and other items. He needed the Primitives to be too distracted to concern themselves with his plans.

  26

  Gerald honed the speech he gave to the newcomers, emphasising that their skills were needed to build the new community. When the people first came out of the vault, in some ways, the Earth did not seem much different from how they remembered it. Even the big pieces of farm equipment moving about of their own accord did not surprise them. The town seemed fairly normal when they got there, except for the lack of shops, cinemas, concert halls, nightclubs or even money.

  There were still thirty more people to come out of the vault when June went into labour. Janice was experienced at helping with the birth and the baby was born perfect several hours later.

  Hagan heard June’s distress and stayed away. He did not want to see any more Primitive births. He had viewed only one and even with his mind protected by a filter and viewed from the safety of his laboratory, it had been a vile experience.

  He knew when it was all over, sensing a change in energy, the replacing of distress with joy. It was an important moment even though the child was half Primitive. It was the first baby born with the blood of his race inside him.

  He finished his work in the laboratory before making his way to the cottages. “There you are,” Emma said. “I was just coming to look for you. You’ve got a lovely son. He’s perfect.”

  June was holding the baby to her breast. He recalled the way the sight of June naked had inflamed his body and was glad he was no longer affected. “He’s beautiful, isn’t he?” June said.

  He did not understand the use of the word beautiful to describe the screwed up, wrinkled bundle she was holding but said, “Yes, beautiful.” It was his son, the one who would keep his line going. That was all that mattered.

  “What shall we call him?” June asked.

  Hagan thought this a strange question. Fathers were never involved in naming babies. He could think only of the one name that mattered to him.

  “Zorino,” he said.

  June burst into tears. “You’re never going to forget her, are you?” Hagan found this illogical. Unless his memory was cleansed, he would always remember Zorina.

  “I’m going to call him Ben,” June said.

  It did not matter to him what the child was called. He wanted to get on with making preparations for the next stage of his plan. On the way back to the dome, he collected a supply of cow’s milk and made his way to the laboratory. Before he could feed it to his son, the formula must be changed.

  When he had completed the task, he returned to the cottage where June was asleep in a chair with her arm around the child. He waited. He needed to get things right for this second stage.

  He had studied the Primitive gestures of the male who has just become a father. When June’s eyes opened, he stroked her hair and kissed the infant on its wrinkled cheek, hiding his revulsion behind the expression June wanted to see. June smiled up at him and he reciprocated with an image of a smile, congratulating himself on the way he had gained her trust.

  When she had fed the infant, Hagan stayed in the room with her. However unwelcome this was, the reward would be worth it.

  Finally, she handed the baby to him. It was the moment he had been waiting for, but he knew he must not hurry.

  “You do like him, don’t you?” June said.

  “Of course,” Hagan replied, mimicking the way she held the baby, attempting to replicate the look in her eyes – that elusive quality that Gerald had called love that he had never understood.

  He waited patiently for June to fall asleep. Half an hour later, her head began to droop and her eyes closed. The moment had come. He crept out of the cottage, still holding his son in his arms, congratulating himself on his meticulous planning and attention to detail. Reaching the dome without incident, he went inside and sealed the door.

  The baby began to cry. He put the bottle he had prepared to its mouth, but it refused to drink. This was unexpected. Hagan could feel his son’s distress reverberating throughout his own body, and his son’s longing for his mother, which he did not understand. What difference did it make to the child whether it was with its mother or father, if it was warm and well fed? A child that carried his DNA should not need his mother in any case.

  The noise of the child crying was unpleasant until Hagan built a wall between himself and the baby. Helkos, Asclepius, Hestia, Auxo, Charis, Phaenna and Eupheme stood around the cot and together they sent calming thoughts to the child, but it continued to cry.

  June woke. It was the middle of the night and both Ben and Hagan were gone. Her blood ran cold. With a premonition that Hagan had tricked her, she left the cottage, calling loudly for him and hammering on Gerald and Emma’s door.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” Gerald asked, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “Hagan’s taken the baby.”

  Gerald did not ask if she was sure. He knew it was true.

  “Wait here, let me go to the dome,”

  “No, I’m coming with you.”

  Emma stood on the stairs, wide awake now, looking scared. She had never forgotten how the workers had taken the babies away when they were living in the clinic, the screams and howls of the mothers as they
were brought back to their rooms empty handed. She wanted to leave straight away.

  “He tricked me,” June sobbed.

  “You help June, I’m staying here,” Emma said. She would kill Hagan if he tried to take her babies away, although she knew she had very little control over what Hagan did.

  Gerald and June were a few feet away from the dome when they came to a halt, prevented from going further by an invisible barrier. June’s body vibrated with her baby’s distress. She felt it in her heart, her stomach, her head. If she could only get to the dome, she would tear it down by hand to get to her baby.

  “Hagan, where are you?” she screamed. “Give me my baby.”

  Gerald called with her. “Hagan, be a man and come out here.” June had fallen to the ground and was crawling around, trying to find some way to get beyond the barrier.

  “Hagan!” Gerald used all the force he could to try to reach him. It was useless. Whatever connection there had once been had gone.

  Inside, the baby’s screams grew more distressed. The system showed that it was putting a strain on its heart and lungs and Hagan was afraid it would harm itself. Its life energy was draining away quickly now and it would not survive if this continued. He must find a solution.

  Into his mind came the image of the child Nicola and the way the babies in the nursery had been lifeless until she picked them up. It was something he could do. He went over to the cot and copied her action, holding the baby in the crook of his arm and rocking it to and fro. Its screams diminished until they became a whimper.

  When June’s screams reached the dome, the baby became restless again, clenching and unclenching its fists. It was time to sever the link between mother and baby, before it put his plan in jeopardy. He set up an electrical storm in all three Primitives’ minds which rendered them unconscious. The noise outside ceased and Gerald and June slumped on the ground. He opened up the Primitives’ minds and cut the connectors that contained the memory of the birth. They would remember nothing of what had happened.

  The next day, Emma suggested they went and lived in the town.

  “It’s a good idea,” June said. “I can’t remember why we stayed.”

  “I’d like to leave, but I’m not sure if we could find the town,” Gerald said.

  “I can’t walk that far. I feel very weak. I don’t know why,” June said.

  “Christine said they followed the path of the river when they went there,” Emma said.

  “Very well, that’s what we’ll do.”

  Hagan appeared in the doorway. “You are planning to go to the town.”

  “He’s been reading our minds again, or whatever he does,” Emma said. “I’ve had enough of it.” Hagan noted with interest that her cheeks were flushed and her eyebrows were drawn together and met just above the nose.

  “You think you’re so much better than us, but you’re not,” she went on. “We’re the ones who managed to turn this Earth around, start the farm and look after the animals. Without us the place would be ruined. There’d be no animals, no people, nothing. Once you died off that would be the end of it. You should be grateful.”

  Gerald glanced at Hagan, afraid of recriminations, but if he was annoyed, it did not show on his face

  “It was I who restored the Earth,” Hagan said. It was a statement of fact. Once the Leaders had died, everything was under his direction.

  “You made us work on the land when you had machinery to do it.”

  “I followed orders.”

  “Are you stupid or what?” Emma said and Gerald held up a warning hand.

  “But when they died – it changed everything,” Gerald said. “Don’t you see that?”

  “I did not have the authority to change the way things were done.”

  “Authority?” Gerald said. “All those with authority were dead.”

  “What it boils down to,” June said. “Is that Hagan couldn’t adapt.”

  “Yes, you’re right,” Gerald said. “It was a question of adapting.”

  “And you think we’re stupid,” Emma said. “Oh, I’ve just realised. He’s a robot!”

  “A robot?”

  “Yes, that’s why he can’t change his instructions.”

  “But surely –,” June began, trying to catch hold of a memory. She felt sure something had happened, but she could not remember what.

  “I see it all now,” Emma said. “The workers weren’t less intelligent people, they were the only people. These so-called Superiors, they were all robots.” It made sense.

  “But this can’t be true, can it?” Gerald said. “What about the story of the Kudlu and how they came to Earth and bred with the people here?”

  “He made it up.”

  “Do robots make things up?” June said.

  They turned to Hagan. “Well?” Emma asked.

  “My mother and father were a mixture of human and Kudlu,” Hagan said.

  “There he goes again with his stories. Let’s just get out of here.”

  Gerald stayed behind. “I’m sorry about that. There’s just one more thing we need then we’ll be out of your hair for good. Can we had one of those pods with a trailer?”

  They packed up all the items in the cottages - the books, the musical instruments, the games and the tools. As they got into the pod, Aurora asked where Ben was.

  “Who’s Ben, darling?” Emma asked, thinking it was a favourite soft toy.

  Aurora pointed to June’s abdomen. “Ben come out lady’s tummy,” she said.

  Emma smiled. There was nothing wrong with Aurora’s imagination.

  “It is finished,” Hagan said, casting his eyes slowly over the scene in front of him: the wall of succulent green foliage climbing up the dome and the food crops, foodstuffs that he had never encountered before, strange things like the Pitaya and Dragon fruit. Beneath the hazel lay his son Zorino. The Primitives, with their strange suspicions, would have pointed to some greater being – Fate or Destiny or God – to explain his involvement with June, which had led not only to the culmination of his ideas, but also to the birth of his son; but it had been he alone who had manipulated and planned for this moment.

  The Primitives’ failure to embrace the Leaders’ plan, their certainty that they alone knew how to restore the earth, had made them blind to what was really going on. They would spend the days that they had left, fighting over the goods he had sent from the storerooms.

  “So the Primitives have really gone?” Helkos said. And you do not believe they will come back?”

  “They will be busy for a long time dividing up the goods that I placed in the disused food factory for them. They will not think of coming here.”

  “So now we can begin?”

  “Yes, it is time.

  27

  June leaned back in her seat. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I feel so weak.”

  Beyond the farm, the earth resembled a shaved head. Tiny green shoots spread out from the boundary in a strip half a mile wide. Nothing stirred out here; no bird or insect could survive the conditions.

  The wind whistled across the flat earth, stirring up a dust storm up ahead.

  In the distance, cows grazed on a lush green plain. A large metal cage stretched across one of the fields and beneath it, a hundred or more chickens roamed freely.

  It was the first sign that something was wrong. In a world without foxes, what were they protecting them from?

  To one side of the dome was a strip of land in full bloom with large swathes of nodding blue, white and orange flowers. The place appeared deserted.

  The pod stopped outside the entrance to the dome and they alighted. The town resembled the one they had seen when Michael was banned: a circular courtyard dominated by a fountain, with streets fanning out.

  A group had gathered outside one of the large houses further up the hill, a grand house with steps leading up to a marble portico and six pillars holding up a balcony that looked out over the town.

  They pushed their wa
y through the crowds at the entrance and found themselves in a spacious marble interior with a sweeping staircase to the upper floor, both crowded with people who could not get into the main room. Through the open door, they could see Christine, Pete and Richard on a raised platform, talking about rubbish. Apparently some people weren’t taking their food rubbish to the communal compost heap, but dumping it in the empty houses at the top of the town as it was nearer.

  “That’s Bernard, isn’t it?” Emma whispered. “I didn’t think they’d let him stay, after what he did.”

  “Better the devil you know …”

  “Where’s the little one then?” Pete asked. Richard visibly tensed.

  June frowned. “I haven’t had a baby. What made you think that?”

  “You told us you were pregnant by Hagan, luv.”

  June laughed. “You’ve got it all wrong. I was helping him with his people’s infertility problems.”

  “But that’s why I left. You told me you were pregnant by Hagan.“ Richard’s voice had a sharp edge to it. “If you didn’t want to live with me anymore, you could have just said so. Do you know how much pain you caused me?”

  June looked afraid. “I don’t know, I can’t remember.”

  “Emma, tell me the truth.”

  Emma screwed her eyes up as if trying to retrieve a long lost memory. “I don’t know. I can’t remember anything.”

  “This is crazy! What’s going on?”

  “Richard, there’s been a misunderstanding, there was no pregnancy,” Gerald said.

  Richard clenched his fists and pulled his mouth into a firm line. “You’re all in it together. Did you come just to taunt me?”

  “We’ve come to live here.”

  Richard turned away and strode out of the building.

  “I’ll go after him,” Gerald said.

  Christine took his arm. “Best to leave him. We’ll talk to him later, after we’ve got you settled in.”

  Back at the entrance, people were milling around the trailer. Hands reached out to take Aurora’s pushchair, lying on the top of the pile but as they made contact, they jerked backwards as if they had received an electric shock.