Evolution

With the whole planet transformed to copies of themselves — using solar sails, fusion drives, even crude antimatter engines — the swarm of replicators had moved out through the solar system, seeking raw material.

The next day, roaming into the country around the town, Snowy saw birds, squirrels, mice, rabbits, rats. Once he thought he saw a goat; it fled at his approach.

Not much else. There didn’t even seem to be many birds around. The place was silent, as if all the living things had been collected up and removed.

Some of the rats were huge, though. And then there were the rat-wolves he thought he had glimpsed. Whatever they were, they fled at his approach.

Rodents had always been in competition with primates, Sidewise said. Even at the peak of their technical civilization, people had had to be content with keeping rodents out of sight, and out of the food. Now, with people out of the picture, the rats were evidently flourishing.

It was easy to hunt, though. Snowy set a few snares, in a spirit of experimentation. The snares worked. The hares and voles seemed peculiarly tame. Another bad sign if you thought about it, because it meant they hadn’t seen humans for a while.

At the end of the second day, Ahmed had them sit in the ruins of the church, in a rough circle on corroded stone blocks.

Snowy was aware of subtle changes in the group. Moon was looking down, avoiding everybody’s eyes. Bo

Ahmed held up an empty ration packet. “We can’t stay here. We have to plan.”

Bo

“We’re going to have to face it,” Sidewise said. “There are no other people — nobody who can help us, anyhow. We haven’t seen anybody. We’ve seen no sign that anybody has been in this area recently.”

“No contrails,” Ahmed said, pointing to the sky. “Nothing on the radio, on any frequency. No satellites. Something went wrong—”

Moon laughed hollowly. “You can say that again.”

“We can’t know how events unfolded. Before the end it must have become — chaotic. We were never recalled. Eventually, I suppose, we were forgotten. Until we were revived by chance.”

Snowy forced himself to ask the question. “How long, Side?”

Sidewise rubbed his nose. “Hard to say. If we had an astronomy almanac I guess we could figure it out from the changed positions of the stars. Failing that, your best guess is based on the maturity of the oak forest.”

Bo

“Not less than a thousand years,” Sidewise said, his voice tight. “Maybe more. Probably more, actually.”

In silence, they let that sink in. And Snowy closed his eyes, imagining he was plunging off the deck of an aircraft carrier into the dark.

A thousand years. And yet it meant no more than the fifty-year gulf that he thought had separated him from his wife. Less, maybe, because it was just unimaginable.

“Some future this is,” Bo

Ahmed said, “We have to assume we are not going to find anybody else. That we’re alone. We have to plan on that basis.”

Sidewise snorted. “Civilization has collapsed, everybody is dead, and we’re stuck a thousand years in the future. How are we supposed to plan for that?”

“That river is probably clean,” Snowy said. “All the factories must have shut down centuries ago.”

Ahmed nodded gratefully at him. “Good. At last, something we can actually build on. We can fish, we can hunt; we can start that tomorrow. Sidewise, why don’t you use that brain of yours for something useful and think about the fishing? Figure out how we can improvise lines, nets, whatever the hell. Snowy, you do the same for the hunting. Further down the line, we’re going to have to find somewhere to live. Maybe we can find a farm. Start thinking about clearing the ground, planting wheat.” He glanced at the sky. “What do you think the season is? Early summer? We’re too late for a harvest this year. But next spring—”

Sidewise snapped, “Where do you think you’re going to find wheat? Do you know what happens if you leave corn or wheat unharvested? The ears fall to the ground and rot. Cultivated wheat needed us to survive. And if you leave cows unmilked for a few days, they just die of udder bursts.”

“Take it easy,” Snowy said.

“All I’m telling you is that if you want to farm, you’ll have to start from scratch. The whole damn thing, agriculture and husbandry, all over again from wild stock, plants and animals.”

Ahmed nodded stiffly. “We, Side. Not you. We. We all share the problems here. All right. So that’s what we’ll do. And in the meantime we gather, we hunt. We live off the land. It’s been done before.”

Moon fingered her clothing. “This stuff won’t last forever. We’ll have to find out how to make cloth. And our weapons will be pretty useless once the ammo is gone.”

Bo

Sidewise just laughed. “Think about stone axes, pal.”

Bo

“Neither do I, come to think of it,” Sidewise said thoughtfully. “And you know what? I bet there aren’t even any books to tell us how. All that wisdom, painfully acquired since we were buck naked Homo erectus ru

“Then we’ll just have to start that again too,” Ahmed said firmly.

Bo

Ahmed looked up at the sky. “We owe it to our children.”

Sidewise said simply, “Four Adams and one Eve.”

There was a long, intense silence. Moon was like a statue, her eyes hard. Snowy noticed how close her hand was to her PPK.

Ahmed got to his feet. “Don’t think about the future. Think about filling your belly.” He clapped his hands. “Let’s move it.”

They dispersed. The crescent moon was already rising, a bonelike sliver in the blue sky.

“So,” Sidewise said to Snowy as they moved off, “how are you finding life in the future?”

“Like doing time, mate,” Snowy said bitterly. “Like doing fucking time.”

III

Maybe five kilometers from the base camp, Snowy was trying to build a fire.

He was in what must once have been a field. There were still traces of a dry stone wall that marked out a broad rectangle. But after a thousand years it was pretty much like any patch of land hereabouts, choked by pere

He had made a fire board about the length of his forearm, with a dish cut into its flat side. He had a spindle, a stick with a pointed end; a socket, a bit of rock that fit neatly into his hand; and a bow, more sapling with a bit of plastic shoelace tied tight across it. A bit of bark under the notch served as a tray to catch the embers he would make. Nearby he had made a little nest of dry bark, leaves, and dead grass, ready to feed the flames. He knelt on his right knee, and put the ball of his left foot on the fire board. He looped the bow string and slid the spindle through it. He lubricated the notch with a bit of earwax, and put the rounded end of the spindle into the dish of his fire board, and held the pointed end in the hand socket. Then, pressing lightly on the socket, he drew the bow back and forth, rotating the spindle with increasing pressure and speed, waiting for smoke and embers.

Snowy knew he looked older. He wore his hair long now, tied back in a ponytail by a bit of wire. His beard was growing too, though he hacked it back with a knife every couple of days. His skin was like tough leather, wrinkled around the eyes, the mouth. Well, I am older, he thought. A thousand years older. I should look the part.