Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“It is a condition of this meeting that I remain present.” said the Mediator. I’d insisted that someone be there for security reasons, along with guards who could be summoned at a moment’s notice. As much as I wanted to give Liss this chance, I couldn’t leave her unsupervised in this kind of situation. “However, I am not required to act as a mediator unless either of you wish it.”

“If Ms. Doe consents?” asked Vawlin.

“I’m fine,” shrugged Liss.

“Then I shall refrain from further comment,” said the Mediator. “Please, begin.”

Liss took a deep breath. “Hi!”

“Hello,” said Vawlin. “Shall we sit?”

“Yeah. Sure.” They sat by the fountain, while the Mediator went to a chair on the far side of the room and let them get on with it.

“Firstly, please accept my apologies for my lateness. We’ve been extraordinarily busy in the last few days…”

“Oh, sure, it’s been kinda crazy everywhere, huh?”

“Yes, yes it has. We’re loaning a number of spacecraft to the IU to help with the evacuation, and anything else we can find that might help.”

“That’s kinda cool.”

“We do what we can. So I understand you believe you may be a member of my species?”

“Uh. Yeah, I guess.”

“Can I ask how you came to that conclusion?”

“Oh, they said I could have a test to see if I was, you know, compatible for, uh, having kids with other species, and it came back Quillian.”

“Something of a surprise, I take it?”

“You can say that again. Does this happen a lot?”

“It does come up occasionally. We’re a very well travelled species.”

“So you go to other universes all the time?”

“Yes, I suppose you could say that.”

“I mean, I heard about that Ilfenard thing…”

His face fell into regret. “Yes. A terrible crime. We had a major social collapse a couple of thousand years ago, and when we rediscovered how to travel to other universes, we found our ancestors had committed monstrous crimes on many worlds. We’ve been trying to put them right ever since. It’s another reason why we’re doing everything we can to help with the evacuation. But there was nothing we could do for Ilfenard, except warn others not to take the same path.”

There was something rehearsed about his speech; he’d said this before, many times. But that was probably only to be expected.

“Uh-huh. So how do people get stuck on different worlds?”

“Well, we undertake a good many scientific surveys, often on worlds too undeveloped to contact directly. We have teams on the surface, disguised as priests, or surveyors, or telemarketers, or whatever’s appropriate. But things can go wrong, I’m afraid. People sometimes get left behind.”

“Do you take your kids along as well?”

“For major surveys, yes. It’s not fair on either the children or the parents to have them separated.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Can I ask you a little about your world?”

“Oh, uh… just an ordinary place, I guess.” She shrugged. “Well, it was before it all went wrong and we had to leave, which is how I ended up here. Uh, there’s one thing I wanted to ask…”

“Yes?”

“Well, I always knew I was different, you know? I mean, really different.”

“In what way?”

“I, uh… I mean I’m different . Do you know what I mean?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“I’m stronger, I’m tougher, I’m faster, I don’t get sick… the doctors said I was some kinda genetic abnormality…”

Vawlin nodded with a smile. “It may be your heritage. If you are Quillian.”

“You mean we’re all like this…?”

“I think you’ll find a number of more developed species have adjusted their genomes. The kind of differences you’re talking about are quite simple ones to implement.”

“Simple. Wow.”

“Certainly. Did you discover any other abilities?”

“I can see pretty well.”

“Can you see things other people can’t?”

“Yeah! Like flowers, you see pictures on a screen and they look all dull and boring but if you look at the actual flowers they’ve got spots and bands on them and nobody else can see it…”

Vawlin nodded again. “We usually have our sight extended into the infra-red and ultraviolet. The markings on the flowers are what, say, a pollinating insect might see. But most humans can’t. You may also have a very long life.”

“Really?”

“Several hundred years. We generally settle on an adult form in our mid twenties and stay that way for a very long time. I myself am two hundred and seventy three years old.”

“No!”

“And therefore I have no idea how old you are.”

“Oh, um, not that old…”

“Well. I can’t confirm you’re a member of my species, not right away. We have to do some background checks first.”

“Okay.”

“We’ll accept the IU’s analysis of your genome, of course, but we would like it done again, just to be sure.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And we will need to know something about the world you’ve been on all this time, so we can match it against our list of missing persons.”

“Right.”

“And if we can find any relatives, of course, we can make doubly sure. I understand you’re very interested in finding your parents.”

Liss’s smile subsided and she seemed more serious. “Yes.”

The Mediator noticed the sudden change in her voice. He’d spent his time politely studying the night sky, but now he looked back down at Liss. Vawlin noticed it too. “I’m sure they didn’t abandon you. Sometimes things can… well, things can happen.”

Liss nodded.

“I don’t want to promise anything. It’s possible they might have died in the years since.”

“I know.”

“Well—”

“What kind of worlds do you go to?”

The question took him by surprise. “Many kinds. I was going to ask you about your world. The one you grew up on. I would imagine that if you’re here, something bad happened.”

“You could say that.”

“Was there an evacuation?”

“Kinda, yeah.”

“Can you tell me about your world?” Liss didn’t answer for a moment. Vawlin looked utterly sympathetic, and put a hand on hers. “It could help us a lot in finding your family.”

The Mediator watched, sensing tension. Vawlin went on. “I know it must have been a terrible experience to see the end of the world you grew up on. But if you really are one of us… I promise you: we won’t let you down. You’ll be part of a species again. You’ll have a world to call home. Whatever happened on that world… you can put it behind you. You can be one of us.”

Behind the blur mask, Liss’s eyes hardened.

“But first you need to tell me something about your world.”

There was a moment of silence before she replied. “You want me to tell you about my world…?”

He couldn’t see the dagger-stare of her eyes, and made the obvious assumption: she’d been traumatised by whatever apocalypse she’d survived. So he let her have her moment, and did a perfect job of looking sympathetic.

“Okay. I’ll tell you about my world.” Vawlin missed the dangerous tone in her voice. The Mediator didn’t, and narrowed his eyes.

“Thank you,” said Vawlin.

“It was… primitive. I guess you’d call it that.”

“We usually prefer ‘less developed’,” he said with a reassuring smile that had no effect on her at all.

“Everything was wrong.”

“What about it was wrong?”

“A lot of people there were special. Special like I was. But they were natives. Stronger than me. Faster than me. Tougher than me. Smarter than me. Some of them were so smart they went mad. They built insane machines for no reason. Released viruses that destroyed livestock and crops. Turned mountains into volcanoes. It was all in the name of science , do you understand me?”