BEYOND EXTINCTION

by John Keeble

  He scans the drone interior very slowly. He can see a trooper fiddling with his kit. Aapeli is reading. Balen, Jack and Max are absent. For once, she is not in the medlab. She spends too much time in the medlab. Why? Yesterday, she used the DNA infuser on herself. Why? Has she found a way to upgrade herself to numan6?

  *

  Alice and Aleksi arrive in the numan2 refuge with an impressive medical bag displaying the emotive purple circle of the International Numanity Emergency Aid Association. Max and Xam are looking ahead to the children already shouting their names.

  "Go," Alice quietly tells the dogs and they streak off.

  She has marked out Sara among a knot of sullen numan2s. The DNA downgrade will sort you out!

  "Sara, I can administer the medicine to protect your people from eye parasites," she says. "There should be enough for everyone." Let them worry that they will not get the treatment.

  "What about sharing your human animal with us?" calls one of the women belligerently. "We are your sisters. You owe us loyalty."

  No confrontation. The DNA downgrade is all that matters. "Today is to protect you, my sisters," says Alice. "The parasite can blind you. We can talk about food another day. Please be patient." She looks directly at Sara. "You first, then our sisters, and then the children." I hate doing this to the children. They are no threat. But what choice do I have?

  Sara, looking nervous, submits and Alice drops the DNA downgrade into her eyes. Then the others jostle forward to make sure they get their share of the medicine.

  Finally, Sara calls the children. The children, so trusting, open their loving brown eyes for Alice and she drops the fluid in.

  May Father Dick forgive me.

  *

  Chapter 36

  It is 10 am – 2 am in the northern Andes where Galen is sleeping – and the drone is silent as Alice, Jack and the troopers begin dismantling the interior security surveillance system. Unexpected fear grips Alice. If Galen is watching, he will do something. He will attack us somehow.

  "Be careful," she breathes, as warily as if Galen is listening. "Blind the system but also look for anything dangerous. Explosives. Anything. Galen may have got the military to booby-trap it."

  The troopers nod. This is their territory. They know explosives and booby-traps and move to their allotted section. Jack and Alice begin work towards the back. There's so much to do. Maybe we should have started an hour ago.

  They slip off the first four panel covers above the external-view screen. "Look at this!" says Jack. "We'll never work out what to cut. Maybe we can rip it all out."

  "Commanders, this wiring is unusual," calls one of the troopers, addressing them both but looking at Jack. He is pointing into the section where he has removed the cover.

  "Let's see," says Jack, gently steering Alice to make sure she is included.

  They peer in. A mass of wiring tangles into even more color coding than the panel Alice and Jack opened.

  "Trooper, do you know how to dismantle this?" Alice asks. We must allocate names to them after their DNA upgrade.

  "I have worked on military equipment, Commander," he replies. "I can see wiring that I know. I can start there."

  "Good," says Jack. "Do it."

  "Yes, Commander, but I must inform you that some of the colors are commonly used for explosives."

  "This is what I feared," says Alice. "Do we abandon the drone or risk dismantling Galen's surveillance system?"

  Jack considers for a moment. "We cannot survive without the drone. We must dismantle." He nods to the trooper, an order to proceed.

  "Let's get on with our own," says Jack. "We're just adding to the pressure by looking over their shoulders."

  They return to their panels and stare at the wires for a moment before Alice takes a decisive step forward. I'll just have to guess! We're geneticists. How do we know what wires to cut?

  "May I suggest that you cut the gold wire first, Commander?" says the second trooper from behind them. "Then you can cut the purple wire. That should disable the system."

  "It's lucky for us that you know about these systems," says Jack.

  "Wiring is basic training for engineering troopers like us, Commander."

  Alice, steeling herself to cut the first wire, pauses to listen to the trooper. Our stupid numan4 culture! Why didn't we accept the troopers as equals and make the most of their skills?

  "Jack, I'm cutting the gold wire." The cutters click. "Now the purple wire."

  She pulls back, relieved. The troopers are working together in their section. They are uncertain and quietly debating which wire to cut. Alice walks over to given them support. "Go slowly. I think you are right in suspecting a bomb."

  "A bomb or something else, Commander," says the trooper with his hands trying to thin out the spaghetti of wires. "It's too complicated. Too many colors." The second trooper follows wires leading towards the drone's flight controls.

  "Jack," she says quietly, "we've come all this way—."

  "Commanders! This is it!"

  They peer in. A spur on the wiring links to a flask uncovered by the parting wires. "Poison gas?" asks Jack.

  "No, it's something worse than poison gas," says Alice. "This kind of flask is triple protected. This is extremely dangerous." To the trooper, she adds: "Can you disable it?"

  "Commander, I can cut the wires but I don't know what will happen. I think the orange wire should be cut first, then the silver, and finally the black. But that's only a guess."

  Jack pulls Alice aside and tells her: "Clear everyone out. I'll do it."

  "But I should do it!" she protests. "Galen is my problem."

  "He's a problem for us all. You have already risked your life with the DNA infusion. This one's mine."

  Alice orders the troopers out and calls to Aleksi, "No one nearer than 150 meters until we give the all-clear. Keep Max and Xam away if they come back."

  She considers closing the door but rejects it. It's our only escape route.

  "I am staying with you. Don't argue," she says as she returns.

  Jack is already reaching into the cavity. "Orange, silver, black – his guess is probably better than mine. You agree?"

  "Yes," she says, her heart thumping, perspiration on her lip. Jack's shirt is soaking and his hands are slippery with sweat.

  She expects a joke from him, his classic way of hiding stress or disagreement, but he is silent as he grips the orange wire with his left index finger and thumb. He's okay. His hands are steadier than when he held his last glass of gin. He slowly gets the blades of the cutters around the wire and cuts.

  "So far, so good," she says. Perspiration runs into her eyes, more tracks down her spine. "Silver next."

  Jack withdraws his hands and rakes them down his trousers to dry them. He leans in and cuts the silver wire and finally the black.

  They stand for a moment, looking at each other. "Dead easy," he says, reaching in again to pull the flask from its fixing.

  "No! Don't touch it!"

  Jack freezes. The troopers are there, ignoring orders, risking their lives.

  "There may be another wire, Commander," says one of the troopers. "May I see?"

  Jack pulls back and the trooper gingerly explores the flask with his hands. He pauses for a second, plucks cutters from his uniform, and reaches in again. A loud click and a relieved sigh. The trooper lifts out the flask.

  Alice takes the flask and reads a label on the bottom. I can't believe it. Galen could not be this cruel. It must have been the military. Even as her mind bounces off Galen planning their slow deaths, she knows that it must have been his work: the military would not have the technical skills to do more than fit the flask.

  "It's safe for the moment," she says. She rereads the warning. "This is the type of ultra-secure flask used by Galen in his laboratories. It has been turned into a weapon of mass destruction: it would have killed us first and then spread."

  "Is it anything that has a name?" Jack asks.

  "
Rot death virus. There will be propellant and carrier gas to circulate the virus. Very effective."

  Jack grimaces. "Let's strip this drone out and make sure there are no other horrors."

  *

  Chapter 37

  There is a serenity about the refugee village. A feeling of security and orderliness without the need to organize or enforce. The numan2s' communal house is finished and work has started on smaller huts for the troopers, Aleksi, Aapeli, and the numan2s who want to live alone or with their children. Village meetings are held in an open-sided sala used for preparing and eating communal meals. The drone has been flown in and mounted on foundations solid enough to defeat the frequent storms.

  Alice and Jack are planning their own house with an office and a sheltered veranda for small meetings. Fears of a military attack have lessened with the introduction of a system of watchers.

  "Not bad for three months' work," says Jack, taking a brief rest from yet more trench digging, and surveying what has been achieved.

  "It's beginning to be a real home," agrees Alice, glad of an excuse to rest. Soon we can start work on repopulating this region. "The numan2 women are content, I have freed the children from what you call genetic handcuffs, and the troopers have become different men since their upgrade. They love being part of our community – I like the way we can value them, their work and their skills instead of ordering them about as military mob-fodder."

  "What about you?" Jack teases. "You had your own upgrade. You are now your own woman, without Galen controlling you, for the first time in your life."

  "It feels wonderful but I choose to be your woman," she says, and playfully hits back: "You have changed, too! I hope you are recording your journey in the new book you are writing."

  "Oh, I'm not that important," he says. "Extinction, the History & Hope – that might be important one day. At the moment, there is no one to read it, but if the world is repopulated, it may be a valuable warning. In a thousand years or so."

  "There were enough warnings all through the 21st century but the humans and numans took no notice. They still wrecked the planet with their greed and aggression."

  "True," admits Jack, undaunted. "Maybe evolution's next try will be better at avoiding disaster."

  She is silent for a long moment, punctuation that Jack recognizes as the precursor to her getting into a sensitive subject. I'm too happy to be serious. I hope she doesn't want to turn today into mental work.

  "Jack," she says tentatively. "You and Max are far more important than you realize."

  "I love you, too," he gently interrupts, attempting to deflect her.

  "I'm serious, Jack."

  "I know, my sweet. I know you have something serious to say. If you need to say it now, that's fine but we're having such a nice, relaxed day. Can we enjoy today and have our serious conversation tomorrow?"

  She smiles, as bright and welcome as the dawn sun. "Tomorrow, then. But can I ask one serious question?"

  "Oh, okay," he agrees, mock-stern masking real feeling.

  "You really love me, don't you?"

  "A bit. Well, maybe a little more than a bit. Quite a lot, actually. Yes, completely, totally, hopelessly."

  "That's all right then," she says lightly, picking up her shovel and getting on with trenching.

  *

  Galen feels at one with the lonely desolation of Andean snow and mist outside his lab window. This is me. The isolation of a mind no one can match. Only Balen came near after I gave her the same DNA upgrade as I gave myself. He shudders, inwardly, and forces himself to admit: "The upgrade I tested on her."

  None of that matters now. He has lost Balen. He has lost contact with the drone. He has lost his last layer of confidence in the military halfwits who decided it was not worth risking an attack drone to capture Balen and the rebuilds until the rot death pandemic had died out.

  My future is the same as my past. My work. Except this time, I will control the repopulation of the planet. This is my destiny. This is the destiny of the world.

  *

  Alice drives the spade into the trench bottom. There seems no end to the foundations they need to dig. The top silt always comes off as easily as her nightdress when Jack is around. But the tightly-compacted sand and stones beneath – they are tough work.

  "Jack," she calls, in need of a drink and a break. "It's today. You promised yesterday that we could talk today."

  "I didn't promise anything but hard work," he calls back from the other end of the trench.

  "Yes you did! A serious talk. We agreed yesterday. You remember?" No wriggling out of it for you today, however charming your excuses.

  "Oh, okay. Do you want to do it now?"

  "No time like the present, as the human animals used to say."

  Even from that distance, she hears Jack grunt but he is smiling as he walks towards her. He hands her a bottle of purified water. She drinks half and gives him the rest. His sunny willingness boosts her confidence and she consciously reins it back. I can't tell him too much too quickly.

  "Right, you have the stage," he says, instantly regretting his careless reminder of The Players and their fate.

  "Jack, you remember our conversation about the report that I wrote for you?"

  "I feel I've aged a lifetime since meeting you but I'm not senile yet. Of course I remember."

  "Good, because that's what I want to talk about." She pauses, looks at him as an offer to let him speak but he just nods. "Two subjects in particular: the library of species memories written into your DNA, and the cassette of DNA strings written into Max."

  "I'm happy to talk about those small adjustments to myself and Max," says Jack.

  But will you be happy with what I'm going to propose? "You and Max can save the numan and animal worlds from dying out. Even the insects to pollenate our plant food are stored in the cassette of DNA in Max."

  Will his imagination be fired by this? Will he reject me? Will I have to use my DNA trigger without his consent? Galen experimented on me without my consent – I don't want to do that to Jack again.

  "We can be heroes. But what does that mean in real money?" he says. "Can we spend Max and buy a new world? Would it be worth it to us and Max if he ends up as a dead pile of DNA?"

  "Max, as much as I love him, is an animal," says Alice persuasively. "He does not have rights beyond what we give him. I will take care of him as much as possible but we are talking about one animal compared with the regeneration of the planet's people and animals."

  "So Max is an animal without rights – even the right to life if it doesn't suit us. Rather like me: a human animal who has no rights to life and safety when your numan2 sisters want to slaughter me for food."

  He's so annoying! One day he objects to being called an animal, the next he identifies with them.

  "Humans killed millions of animals every day," she says. "I love Max but he is just another animal. Do you think humans ever thought about whether their species was morally right in exploiting and killing other animals?"

  She squares up to him, irritated and ready for a fight, but he does his numan mask and shows nothing. Just waits, the tension building. And without warning, the fault lines of her attitudes and beliefs shatter.

  As a scientist, I can use any animal and justify it with what my teachers said. As a numanbeing, how can I say that abusing and killing a person is wrong but doing it to any other living creature is acceptable? Life is life. It's sacred.

  "If I can work out a way of extracting the cassette of genetic codes without harming Max, will you cooperate in regenerating life when the rot death virus has died out?"

  "If you want to play god, I'll listen," he says, an unusual coolness in his attitude. "I don't mind negotiating on what you want to achieve and how."

  He has no idea that I could just do it without his agreement. But what will happen to us if I take that route?

  "I know Galen well enough to know that he is creating new life now," says Alice. "He will use any metho
d and take any advantage."

  "So let him. I would rather keep Max safe and our hands clean. Find a way forward that doesn't exploit any living creature – ban the vivisection labs, stop eating and using other creatures, see yourself for what you are: a killer species exploiting weaker species."

  "It's not as easy as that, Jack. Do you want a new world that reflects Galen and his evil ways – or do you want a new world with our values?"

  They stand for a moment, face to face, their confrontation spiking again.

  "Values make the world," says Jack. "You are not killing Max or any other living being."

  *

  Chapter 38

  Jack lingers over the last of his tea and wonders about the weeks since his blunt warning to Alice that her new world would have to eliminate abuse and killing. She certainly seems to have changed her views.

  "Hey, Great Writer," she calls as she returns from gathering food with Max, who bounds up to Jack and slurps a greeting across his face. "I'll get dinner," she says, walking past him to their new house. "You finish your book."

  He laughs, surprised how he can be so happy after all that has happened. "It's a deal," he calls, watching her go into the house while Max settles next to him in the tamed jungle patch they call their garden.

  His book. Will it ever be finished? In that new beginning when he and Max first met Alice, it was prescient – a dire, hopelessly inadequate warning. But now?

  "You know, Max, thirty thousand years ago, the Neanderthals slowly tipped into extinction when Homo sapiens spread through the world. Ten thousand years later, humans and dogs decided they could survive together. Can any of us survive now?"

  *

  Chapter 39

  The Beginning

  Every illusion contains its own truth

  Eden Garden Village, as Alice and Jack's survivors call the old numan2 refuge, is overcrowded. Strong muscles are building dry, off-ground shelters to sleep in. They are taming the effects of the nightly storms but, as they win in one way, the widening Euphrates threatens in another.

  "It's not just the river that's a problem," says Alice at the morning meeting of village leaders. "It's the overcrowding with all the new refugees. Sanitation is being affected by the rising water table. Food supplies are nearly exhausted and we are having to forage further into the forest."