Paul Hardy - The Last Man on Earth Club

“I can’t say I have. But I take it you didn’t have any problems?”

“Ah, well. Everyone has problems the first time. Only question is whether or not you’re going to throw up. I didn’t, but it was a close-run thing.”

“Did they try to put you off?”

“Oh, gods, everything. Half of ’em trying to propose, the other half thinking I’d sleep with them just because they happened to have a prick going spare. Professors giving their favourites the extra help and none for us. Every bloody deck they could stack they bloody well stacked a mile high. I would have qualified, mind, but I never got the chance, did I?”

“What happened?”

She looked at me as though I were stupid. “The first outbreak, what do you think?”

“I didn’t realise it happened that long ago.”

“Oh didn’t you? Like you haven’t been working your way round to it, you sneaky cow. I know your game, you want to hear about how I banged my head fighting them and that’s why I’m cranky and objectionable—”

“Actually, I found one of the other things you said rather interesting…”

“Oh, and now you’re going to check on my periods…”

“No. Nothing to do with that. You said something about the way the outbreak made men and women more equal?”

“Hah! Rubbish…”

“If that’s not true, why did you say it?”

“Which outbreak are we talking about?”

“Any one.”

“Well I was probably talking about the last one. But now you’ve got me talking about the first one and it didn’t happen then. Hah! The dead were ripping people’s guts out and they still didn’t want precious flowers picking up a gun and defending themselves. ’Course, then the precious flowers’d end up revenning and you don’t want to know how many times some big strapping lad had his windpipe bitten off trying to save ’em.”

“So what did you do?”

“Huh. Stupid cow. I volunteered.”

“You volunteered for the military?”

“You must be joking! No, I volunteered for the Coroner Corps. They wanted every physician in the country to join up so they could figure out who was dead and who wasn’t. Not like it was hard to tell but no one knew a damn thing then. So they started with coroners and pathologists and whatnot and made ’em go house to house checking on people with the cholera, to see if they were revenning. Then they found out there weren’t enough, so they got doctors in as well. And they still didn’t have enough people, so I volunteered. They told me to report to the local hospital and be a nurse instead, as though I wasn’t already there covering for the doctors who were off with the Corps, or the ones who were too damn busy with the cholera. Couple of weeks later they came back begging. If they tried it now I’d tell them where to shove it… you really are sneaky, you know that, don’t you?”

“I’m sorry?”

“You start off asking about medical school and here I am talking about revenants and I don’t even know how I got here!”

“You’re the one that did the work, Olivia. I think you want to talk.”

“Rubbish.”

“I think you like proving your point. And you proved your point in the outbreak, didn’t you?”

“Didn’t do me any good, did it? I’m still bloody here, aren’t I?”

“I’d like to find out more about what you did…”

“Nah. Let’s talk about veg.”

“Vegetables…?”

“Yeh. Let’s talk about the garden. You like me doing the garden. So let’s talk about that. Those tomatoes are never going to come up…”

She spent the next half an hour complaining about the quality of the local soil, the genetic modifications to the seeds, the lack of adequate rainfall and everything that was morally wrong with the garden. As a diversionary tactic, it was extremely effective; but at least we’d progressed a step further towards the outbreak.

Iokan was the last of the three I regarded as a suspect for the breakout. He was still recovering from the injuries he suffered when his world ended, so I wasn’t sure if he was physically capable — but then, given the way in which his body had clearly been modified, I couldn’t say for certain what his physical abilities might be. And there was one lingering question: his military experience, which was conspicuously absent from his biography as given to the triage counsellor when he came down the Lift.

“Good afternoon, Iokan,” I said as he came into my office, wearing his usual robes.

“And good afternoon to you,” he said. My implant told me the words I was hearing were not a translation from Iokan’s language, but spoken in Interversal.

“That’s rather impressive,” I said. “Have you learnt any more phrases?”

He took a moment to grasp what I was saying; he wasn’t wearing his contact lenses. “I have learn some of more words…”

“That’s not quite correct,” I said.

“Ah,” he replied. “I perhaps use should lenses.” He had a think and tried again. “I perhaps should use lenses?”

“I think you should,” I agreed. He sighed, took out the case, and popped them in. “Sorry about that,” he said in his own language. “I thought I knew a bit more than I did.”

“It’s still very impressive. You’ve only been learning for three weeks, after all.”

“I’m good at taking in new information.”

“Yes. You have a number of interesting abilities.”

“Is that what you’d like to talk about today?”

“There’s a few things I’d like to go over. First of all, Katie.”

He looked a little shamefaced. “Ah.”

“You spent some time in privacy with her.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that.”

“No, of course not.”

“Did she say something?”

“She said you were worried about what your wife might think.”

He fell silent.

“Are you concerned?” I asked.

“I don’t think it’s really any of your business.”

“If you were trying to provide Katie with therapy, then it is.”

He thought for a moment. “I think Szilmar would want me to help…”

“I hope that’s the case. But I’d like you to think about it next time. You’re not a trained counsellor, and Katie has a very unusual psychological makeup. It’s hard to say what may or may not help her.”

He didn’t look happy, but at least I’d made my point. “Were we going to talk about anything else?” he asked.

“I’d like to talk about your military career.”

“I see.”

“We weren’t previously aware you’d had one.”

“It’s not something I really want to discuss.”

“Why is that?”

“We don’t talk about it.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t.”

“Hm. Well, at the risk of seeming unsympathetic, I have to ask: who’s ‘we’?”

“The people I served with.”

“And where are they now?”

He thought about that. “With the Antecessors, I suppose.”

“Along with the rest of your military.”

“…yes. That’s a very good point.”

“So why is secrecy so important?”

“It used to be for our protection…” he mused. “But I suppose you’re right. They don’t need to be protected any more.”

“So you could talk about it if you wanted to.”

He smiled. “I could, couldn’t I?”

“So let’s start.”

“Okay. What do you want to know?”

“Just a sketch outline, to begin with.”

“I went in when I was twenty. Dropped out of university, went down to the recruitment centre and signed up. They were happy to see me.”

“Why was that?”

“People weren’t joining up as much as they used to.”

“So it was a purely volunteer force?”