Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

I watched from my office: I’d seen many apocalypses before, but it never prepares you for the raw grief of someone who has just seen his planet begin to die.

“My world is ancient, and proud, and famous, and doomed ,” said the ambassador. “And perhaps we built too high. Perhaps there are too many of us. Perhaps only a few need to survive… but there are nine billion who will die if the Interversal Union cannot act…”

A chime came from my office wall and dampened the sound. It was the call I had been expecting: a conference, assembled on screens because none of us had time to get to a remote meeting room. They popped up on my wall one by one: Mykl Teoth in his office; Baheera om-challha Isnia on the Lift, making what looked like an ascent, though it was hard to tell; Koggan BanOrishel somewhere outdoors in Hub Metro, blue lights reflecting on a metre-thick crystal wall behind him; Eremis Ai walking through the new ICT headquarters; Henni Ardassian using a pad, sitting in the back of the IU Assembly Hall itself; no one else. Quorate enough for decisions.

“I’m addressing the assembly as soon as the ambassador from Ardëe is finished,” said Henni. “So let’s make this quick. We’ve gone from thinking a worst case scenario was a ten year evacuation to having only eight or nine months. No matter what the ambassador says, we’re probably only going to be able to get a billion out.” She shook her head. “Only!”

“How the hell did it happen…?” asked Koggan.

“We don’t know and I’m not discussing it now. I only want opinions about what happens to the group, given that resources are going to be very thin for the foreseeable future. We’re going to need the centre back, for a start. We’ll be flooded with refugees and we won’t have enough room for them as it is.”

“I think, for our purposes, I’d like the group to continue with Dr Singh,” said Eremis. “I’m not too worried where. Hub Metro would actually be more convenient.”

“I don’t want them outside a secure environment,” said Koggan. “There’s only two places we can keep them: the Psychiatric Centre or the Correctional Facility. I suppose you don’t want the latter.”

“The Psychiatric Centre isn’t the best place for them either,” said Mykl.

“We can provide something,” said Baheera, making Henni frown for a moment. “I think I can loan you a high security negotiation facility, at least in the short term.”

“Well,” said Henni. “That’s a solution for now…” she looked up at a sound in the Assembly Hall; the ambassador choking back tears.

I drew a breath. It was time to own up to my own frailties, much as I didn’t want to. “There’s another problem,” I said.

“Yes,” agreed Henni without letting me finish. “We might need to reassign you to the evacuation. You have no idea how big this is going to be. I’m about to ask for half the IU budget for the next five years to cover it.” She pushed on, overriding what she assumed would be my objections. “I know what you’re going to say, I know you’ve got your moral obligation, but there’s going to be at least a billion people coming out of Ardëe and we’ve never handled those kinds of numbers before.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I said.

“Well? What did you mean?” demanded Henni, eyes flicking up at the events in the IU Assembly Hall.

“You might need to find someone else anyway.”

“I’m sorry…?”

“I might have to spend some time away from the group. And… I might be joining my species, on the colony world.”

“You’re what? ”

Mykl didn’t share Henni’s outrage. He’d been the one to arrange the therapy with Ranev. “Medical reasons?” he asked.

“Yes,” I said.

“At a time like this? ” demanded Henni.

“I might not be much help,” I said.

“We’ll be sorry to lose you,” said Eremis. “But I think we would understand if you had to go.”

Henni shook her head in exasperation, then looked up at another sound in the hall. “I’m on. We’ll talk about this another time.”

She switched off her pad, and her screen was replaced with a feed disconnected icon. The others made haste to turn to the news channel, just as I did.

An assistant led the ambassador from Ardëe away, still weeping as images from his world played on the screen behind him. A view from space, lit up with the blue glow of cities spraying out across a continent. The lights flickered and died from electrical overload as electronics all over the world failed in the teeth of the solar storm. Someone had the decency to fade out the image as the ambassador was taken outside, and it was replaced with a simple caption: Henni Ardassian, Director, Refugee Service .

We watched as Henni went in front of the representatives of thousands of worlds to tell them the hard facts about what the horror on Ardëe meant, and beg for the money to save a species from extinction.

Kwame didn’t hear about Ardëe. He didn’t even notice the snow, which kept all of us inside for days while the blizzards turned the centre into the winter retreat it was supposed to be. Kwame never even looked out of a window. He hadn’t left the bunker for two weeks.

He slept in the officer’s quarters to begin with, and then moved into the enlisted men’s barracks a few days later. This made no immediate sense since the barracks were less comfortable and filled with the stink he’d specified, but I suspected there was a very good reason.

He spent the days going below into the lower level, sometimes tinkering with the equipment, but mostly sitting among the hibernation chambers. And while he was there, he talked. No one listened but me, and I did so from my office, taking no part in the conversation. I asked him once or twice if there was anything he wished to discuss, but he politely declined. And then, a day after the announcement of the Ardëe evacuation, he asked me to join him there.

I found him sitting by the pedestal of a hibernation unit, and he invited me to sit beside him.

“So…” I said. “Who have you been talking to?”

“I have been talking to myself.”

“I noticed that.”

“You do not perceive my meaning.”

“I’m sorry. Go on.”

“The person I have been speaking to… that man… is Kwame Vangona. Last President of the sovereign republic of Mutapa.”

I nodded.

“And he has been dead for many decades,” he said.

I nodded again.

“You knew this.”

“I’ve been listening.”

“I believed you would.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Everything. His whole life. After the end, he would come down to see me. He wanted someone to talk to. Someone who was in the army, but not an officer. He was a man of the people…” He looked away. “He wanted someone to know why he had done it. How he came to that decision. So he told me everything. How his wife died. Everything.”

“What did you do?”

“He was the President. I listened. We had met before — did I say that? No, of course not. We met at Horonga, when I was installing defensive systems. He was an officer, still there after the war… he was concerned that the men who would operate the defences did not have the education to understand what they were doing. He was right, but I dared not say anything. Years later, when I was injured because one of them set the rangefinder wrongly on a grenade launcher — the poor fool could not add or subtract to save his life — he raised the issue in public. He was campaigning for educational reform, and I suppose it was just what he needed… he was selected for Parliament not long after that. So when we met again, in the bunker, he remembered me. He was sorry he did not do more for me when I was injured. All the people dead in the world and he was sorry about my arm…”