The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF (collection)

WORLD WITHOUT END F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre

This final trilogy of stories takes us right to the far ends of existence on Earth.

Fergus Gwynplaine Maclntyre is a Scottish-born writer, playwright and journalist, long resident in the United States. His work, often humorous and noted for its detailed research and rigorous plotting, has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. His books include the novel The Woman Between the Worlds (1994) and a collection of humorous imaginings Maclntyre’s Improbable Bestiary (2005).

HE STOLE MY death. After all these long years I forget his face. I remember his hands, the long tapering fingers holding the hypodermic shaft and pressing its needle into my skinny-skank arm as I beg him to give me a drug I never tried before. Ooh, yeah. Too right, that’s good.

When I met him, back in 2023,1 was a street bint: selling my snatch to kerb-crawlers and other pervs, just to get enough dosh to buy my next high. When the ecstasy wore off and I came down again, I’d go back on the game again. Another night, another street.

Now I’ve got every street in the world to myself.

I’ve exhausted all the pencils in the world. I’ve used up all the pens, markers, biros, highlighters. Once, when I was still living in London, I broke into a museum and twocked a rusty old typewriter I found there but it only lasted me a couple of years while I banged out these notes to myself. (Whoever else is going to read them?) I’ve outlived hard drives, soft drives, flash drives, tweets, flippits, thinxes and all the other fiddly-fancy ways to store text. I’ve gone back to the beginning, I have.

I write with charcoal on walls. There’s no shortage of walls hereabouts, and when I run out of charcoal I just burn something.

The sun gets bigger every day. I used to think it only seems to get bigger cus it’s coming closer, and that. No. It’s really growing bigger, I’m sure. And redder.

The nights are fewer and shorter now, and when night comes I don’t recognize the stars. I was never good at their names: I only know Charles’s Wain and Orion. A few thousand years after I lost my death, the stars in Orion scarpered off in different directions. Now the stars are all strange, except for the sun overhead. Too right I know that one.

I remember my father. When I think of him all I see is a mouth shouting at me and two hard square fists. I remember his voice telling me I was just a whore and a slapper and yelling at me that I’d never amount to nowt. He got that last bit wrong though: only I’m the most important person in the world, now.

Cus I’m the only one left.

I can’t remember my mam. I’ve forgotten the faces and the voices of everyone I ever loved. The only people I can still recall are the bastards I’ll hate till the day I die. Which likely means I’ll hate them forever. Most of all, I hate my dad and the filthy perv who stole my death.

I was out in the street when I turned fifteen, and I was on the game and sixteen when I met him. One of those clever lads from the Uni, he was, reading science. While I was pulling him off in the alley, he kept nattering to me about something he was working on. Nanotech, that was the word. And summat called the Hayflick limit, which meant bugger-all to me at the time, only I sussed it out later. Said he hadn’t kept track of his own experiment, and wasn’t sure he could ever repeat the results. I wanted him to stop jawing so I could just concentrate on getting him off and then get on to my next punter, but he kept blagging about little tiny robots and such. I was wearing a skimpy miniskirt and a halter. He saw the tracks all in the veins in my arms and my legs and he knew I was on the stuff. Then he jabbed a needle into my arm, injected something. It felt like fire in my blood, ooh I wanted it I wanted it.

I’d already got his money, so he just did up his flies and he left. I pulled a few more punters, then I went back to the bedsit I was sharing with two other girls on the game. I was on the blob that night, so I pulled the used tampon out of my fadge and chucked it away, but I couldn’t find a clean one to put in. I found my last clean pair of knickers, and put those on. I felt like all my blood was on fire, and for a while I couldn’t sleep. Then I passed out, like.

When I woke up, there was a hole in my new knickers… just there, across the fadge. There was also a hole in the mattress, underneath.

I wasn’t hungry, but that’s normal when you’re doing ecstasy. Thing is, I wasn’t hungry for a high, either. For the first time in all I could remember, I wasn’t hungry or thirsty for owt. I put on a skirt, then I looked for my make-up. When you’re on the game, you age fast, and you want a bit of slap to cover the wrinkles and that.

Then I noticed that the tracks in my arms had gone. And the ones in my legs were fading.

I got my make-up and went to the mirror. While I was putting on my slap and my lippy, I saw that the lines in my face were gone. All this time, I’d been sixteen going on forty. Now I looked more a proper age sixteen again.

I remembered that fellow from Uni, and I figured whatever was in that drug he’d needled me with, I wanted more of it. But I had no notion of where to find that punter again.

Till then, I’d been going days at a trot without a proper meal, spending all my dosh on ecstasy and other drugs. After I met that perv from the Uni, it took me a couple of days to twig that I wasn’t hungry any more, nor I didn’t want the drugs neither. But every day, I kept finding holes in my knickers, so I always felt a breeze round my fadge. After a week without any meals, and not wanting any, I started to feel like maybe I was

(gap)

and wondering if I was going to stay sixteen years old for the rest of my life. Whenever I cut myself, or got beaten up by a punter, the hurt would heal right away. Except my teeth, and that. Before I’d met that perv, I’d had a few teeth knocked out that never grew back, and some chipped teeth that only got worse. Strange that everything else heals now, but never my teeth.

I stopped going on the blob. I’d figured out that, whenever I sat down, or when my fanny ever touched against owt, that’s how those tiny nano-robots inside me would get energy to keep working: whenever I pulled away, a few bits and bobs of whatever my fadge had touched would be missing, as if it had melted off, like. Didn’t matter what: cloth, wood, metal, plastic. My lady-bits had become some kind of dispose-all, eating anything. Glass, too. So I’m a human bottle bank.

There was only so long I could stay in one neighbourhood without someone noticing I never get any older. I tried to avoid the dole office, the labour exchange, the Nash… the National Health System, I mean. Anyplace where government folk would see me. When they made everyone get ID microchips under their skin, I knew the game was up. After I’d been microchipped a few weeks, my skin pushed the microchip out again. The people at Central Entry knew straight away.

Central Entry’s security team came to nick me. They took me to a gowy lab down at Centry. They did no end of tests on me, and somebody twigged that the microbots in my bloodstream are regenerating my body — except my teeth — so that everything heals and I never get older. Some government wonk with big words explained to me about how my telomeres stay the same, and the Hayflick limit, and that. Another gowy told me the nanobots in my blood are (I heard this word often enough to remember it) self-replicating.

Then they locked me up, so they could study me. Special Act of Parliament or summat, so they could keep me locked up in a lab.

The doctors were especially interested in how I never need to eat nor drink, because the nanobots inside me get energy and materials from whatever touches my fadge. I still need to sleep, though.

They gave me a private room but it was just a cell, cus I was never allowed to leave except when they took me out for tests. They stuck needles in me, and took all the blood out of my body twice over, trying to take out the tiny robots. They did tests on my fadge, and that, and several times my lady-bits melted the tips of their scientific thingies. Then they put me back the room again. With the door locked.

Once, they turned off the vents in my cell, and I could hear all the air pumping out. I couldn’t talk, with no air and that. I couldn’t breathe, neither. About three hours later, the air came back and I started breathing again, then some doctors came to see me. Said it was an accident. Liars!

There’s a water tap in here, but I only drink water once in a while when I’m dead bored. That’s dead bored, not dead. Once I went without water for two months, no probs. One of the doctors said summat about the nanobots rehydrating my cells. He also said as how the nano-wotsis had adapted to my personal DNA and that, so injecting some of my blood into somebody else won’t work the trick.

I never get hungry or thirsty. At least I still need to sleep.

After seven or eight years of getting poked and jabbed, I tried to

(gap)

and they tried as long as they could to keep the lab safe from the snot-rot (what I heard a nurse call it), or the Global Pandemic (what a doctor called it), but finally it showed up in the lab and they all started dying. The stuff eats flesh and bones and all, and that. I heard rumours from the lab staff about people just melting into huge puddles of snot, or at least it looks like snot, with nowt left but their clothes and shoes and maybe bits and bobs of their teeth.

One morning I woke up and nobody answered the signal to come to my cell, no matter how many times I pushed the button. I tried to force the door open, or a window, but the security thingies kept stopping me same as ever. The automatic voice kept warning me not to try again.

After a long time, the lights went out and the air cycle stopped. I kept trying the door but just getting the warning. I screamed for somebody, anybody. Finally, the automatic voice stopped. After another long time, I tried the door and it opened.

It took me a while and more aggro to get out of the lab, but I did.

Everybody was dead. I could see the big piles of snot and clothes where some people had been lately, and inside the buildings some little piles of dust where the snot had dried up.

Most of the animals were dead too. Plenty of trees and plants, though. And insects. There were birds for a few weeks, then they all started dying.

I found a car that worked without the security link to its owner’s ID chip. I’d never twigged how to drive properly, but when you’re the only driver on the road it’s easy-peasy. I got out of London and I headed for the

(gap)

in the motorboat I’d found to get to France. I went along the coast till the boat needed a recharge and I couldn’t keep it going. Then I found another car I could start, and for a couple of years I just

(gap)

and wouldn’t you bloody well know it that whatever killed everything else won’t kill the insects, and there’s more of them all the time! Ugh! Flies and beetles and nasties, and there seem to be more every day. And I’m seeing new sorts of insects now: flies all glittery like red metal, and beetles with big yellow eyes, and I’m sure there weren’t any of those before the snot-rot killed off all the people. At least the rats mostly

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Once in a long while I find an old stash of food in plasti-clings so it never went off nor got mouldy, and sometimes I’ll eat something just to remember what food tastes like. Sometimes the wrap is broken and the food’s gone off, but I’ll eat it anyway. Not as if it will kill me ha ha. Once I ate some cheese that had gone all mouldy, just for the new experien

(gap)

and I came running up shouting at them to take me along, take me with them back to wherever they bloody came from. I know they saw me. I’m sure they heard me. Two of them looked at me with I guess those were eyes. But the bug-men just went back into their big metal ball. It made a humming noise and then it glowed and then it just wasn’t there anymore. It didn’t go up to the sky or like that. It just went.

I waited a while for the bug-men to come back, or anyone else to show up, but finally I knew they would never

(gap)

About every ten or twelve years I’d try to kill myself again, but of course it never worked and I stopped hurting myself. That bastard who stole my death, you’d think he’d of fixed it so I could never feel pain, neither. Every time I tried to kill myself the cut would bleed and hurt like flipping hell but it always healed back.

The first few years weren’t so bad cus I found a stash of 3-Vs and a viewer and some power packs, so at least I could still watch holovids and that. I watched all the discs with stories on them, over and over, till I knew them all off by heart. Then I finally got so bored I started watching the educational discs too, and I learnt some physics stuff and that. Things got worse when I couldn’t find more batteries that worked and I couldn’t recharge the dead ones.

It’s so bloody not fair. Batteries get to die but I don’t.

I was never much for reading, but when I couldn’t watch any more 3-Vs, I found a library that had thousands of textdisks. I tried to read one, but the viewers wouldn’t go. Then in the cellar I found hundreds of those old books and mags people had before the disks. I was off my nut with boredom so I started reading.

Then I thought I’d have a go at writing and that’s how I started this diary. Not that anyone will ever read it, unless the bug-men come back. I couldn’t thumbtext like how people used to write, but I found some old pens and that.

I decided if I was to write things down then I should do the job properly and learn all the right spelling and commas and apostro-things and that, and maybe learn some big words if I could find them in books. So I tried to keep a proper diary of all my

(gap)

I stopped counting the years a long time back. It was easier when there were different seasons. After I went immortal, winter never bothered me except for being harder to travel and all. After all the plants died, I could still keep track of seasons because of winter coming and going. The best part about winter is there are fewer insects.

For a long time, the mosquitos wouldn’t leave off me. Nor the flies. But they all seem to be dead now. Except these beetles. Everywhere I go, millions of beetles. I wish they would die.

I wish I could die.

By now I know I’m at least three thousand years old, except I’m still only sixteen.

I still remember my father. I still remember him shouting at me, and beating me. I hate him I hate him. Besides me, the only thing that never dies is the hate.

(gap)

The sun gets bigger every day, and redder. There aren’t seasons anymore, unless you count it’s always summer.

Getting hotter. I sweat a lot but that means the nano-bastards inside me just work harder to replace it and my fadge melts more of whatever I sit down on to get more energy and mass and that. I forget most of what those doctors told me but I remember that part.

I remember the moon. Before all the grass went away, I used to like going to sleep in a field under the stars, looking up at the friendly moon while I drifted to sleep.

The moon went away a long time ago. I don’t know where it went.

Once in a long while I try to

(gap)

Somehow the nano-things changed. A while back I noticed that I don’t need to sleep any more. I’ve tried sleeping but it never comes. I’m tired all the time but I can’t sleep.

It’s just so bloody not fair. All this long time, the only thing left about me that was still normal is that I could sleep. Now the bastard who stole my death has stolen my sleep too. At least make it so I stop getting tired!

When I twigged that the nanobots had changed inside me, I started hoping I could die soon. Some hope! I’m still here.

After the seasons stopped, for a while I started counting days and nights. All the wood and most of the metal are just dust rust now: only plastic and porcelain are left from when people were alive. And stone. I found an old piece of light plastic I could make scratches on, and I added a scratch every morning when the sun came up. Little scratches, rows of ten. I took the plastic with me whenever I went somewhere else, to keep track. By now everywhere I go looks a lot the same as everywhere else.

After I made 1,347 scratches on the plastic, I ran out of room to make more. After a long time, I found another piece of plastic I could scratch. I scratched 1,347 at the top, then kept adding one scratch every day in rows of ten. I did that for a long time.

I’ve been alone for at least 12,000 years now.

I’ve decided to forgive my father.

(gap)

I’m going blind in one eye. The left one. I can’t remember the last time anything excited me, but I got excited and all when I noticed it. If something’s going wrong with me and now it doesn’t heal, maybe those stinking nano-things are finally breaking down inside me.

My teeth wore down to stumps a long long time ago. I remember one of those lab doctors telling me this would happen and offering to yank all my teeth while I still had them. Now I wish they’d done it. I had one toothache that lasted about three centuries, but it finally stopped.

I think the years are getting shorter now, as if it’s taking shorter whiles for the Earth to go around the sun. It’s so bright all the time, I have trouble telling when it’s night now, and all the

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I WANT TO DIE I WANT TO DIE I BLOODY DAMN WANT TO DIE

(gap)

Even though I stopped needing to breathe a long time ago, I just always kept up breathing by reflex, and that. Sometimes when I got bored enough I’d hold my breath for six or seven hours, but when I stopped it I’d always start breathing again. Without trying. I remember a very long time ago, when I could still sleep, one night I put my head in a plasti-cling and I tied it tight round my neck so there was no air. When I woke up the next day I’d stopped breathing for several hours but it didn’t make a difference, so I took the thing off and my breathing started same as always.

That was long long long ago. It’s been getting harder to breathe for a long time now. It’s not me that’s changing, it’s the air. It feels thicker than it used to be, and hotter, and stickier. I think there’s something poison in it too, but not poison enough to kill me. For a long time it hurt to take a breath, and I got excited again cus I hoped I was dying. But it just got harder and harder to breathe, and it hurt more and more.

One day I noticed I wasn’t breathing any more. I hoped my body was shutting down at last at last at last but no apparently it just decided from now on breathing was too much work so it just slacked off.

A long time ago, every once in a while I’d find a river that was mostly nasty stuff instead of water but I’d take a quick drink just to remember water. I can’t remember the last time I saw a river. Nor lakes.

The cities mostly went to dust a long time ago. I went back to the seashore, where it used to be I mean, so I could see the changes in the ocean. I’m sure all the fish died thousands of years back. For a while some of that algy-stuff was still alive in the ocean but now I don’t think so.

The ocean’s getting smaller. Every time I walk down the beach the sand and stones are longer and the ocean is shorter.

For a while, there were some kind of nasty wiggle-things alive I never saw before. I’m sure they weren’t around until after all the people died, so there’s no science-y name for them. Ugh! Just wiggle-things with too many legs and all slime. And long feely bits instead of eyes. They came up in the mud near the ocean, when there was still mud. For a while I was actually glad to see them because at least something new was alive. They’re gone now.

Sometimes I scream but no one hears me.

I used to be able to cry. Now the tears never come no matter how much I want them. It’s just so bloody not fair. I can’t eat I can’t drink I can’t sleep I can’t breathe and now I can’t even cry. I’ve lost everything that ever made me human except I can’t die.

(gap)

ought to be some way to turn off the sun it’s so bright all the time and when

(gap)

It’s happening faster. Used to be if I hurt myself the cut or the hurt would heal at the normal speed for healing. Yesterday I found a jagged piece of plastic with a sharp edge, so I took it in one hand and I deliberately slit open my other arm all the way from my wrist to my shoulder. I started bleeding and I hoped the nano-things would all leak out. While I watched it the whole bloody cut healed in about nineteen seconds. I heal faster now.

It’s just so bloody not fair.

(gap)

Those bug-men and their big metal round thing never came back but after a long time some green shiny people showed up. Not shaped like humans but green and shiny. I think they were all female, no men. They started building a city and planting new sorts of plants and changing the air so it got easier to breathe. Too right I came running to meet them. Their words are just a lot of squeaking noises but they tried to teach me anyway and I tried to learn but it was just too hard. The sky is so bright all the time now, I could just barely see a few stars in the little bit of night, but one of the green ladies pointed up at the sky and I think she was showing me what star they came from, I mean what star their planet is from.

For a long time I lived in their city as a kind of pet and they were mostly nice to me except when they didn’t understand what I wanted. They did all kinds of things to me that I guess were medical tests but I let them do it partly because I wanted the green ladies to like me and partly because I hoped they’d find out how to cure me so I can die. After they stopped testing me they were mostly nice to me.

The beautiful shiny green ladies had all sorts of lovely art and precious things they made, not like the statues and paintings and like all back when other humans were alive. The green ladies make this beautiful art out of glowing hot gas that just hangs in the air for a while, then melts. One of the green ladies showed me this sculpture of red gas she’d made, then she pointed up at the sun overhead, and I sussed that they make their lovely sculptures from the same stuff as the sun. I know it’s called plasma gas cus I learnt it off one of those holovids. After a long while, the lovely green ladies even managed to show me how to work one of their thingies so I could make words and pictures in the air out of burning hot plasma gas.

Then something happened suddenly and all the green ladies left in a hurry. I never knew why. They left behind for me their city and some machines but I couldn’t suss how to make those machines work. It was nice they were here while it lasted though.

I wish the green ladies had taken me with them.

(gap)

The sun is right over me all the time now. Big red hot bloody hot.

Every once in a while I travel back to someplace where I was before and I find something I wrote a long time ago. I’m having trouble remembering what I wrote so long ago, so any time I find my own writing it’s a surprise like reading summat for the first time.

My right eye is going blind like my left one did. I never sleep but I have nightmares awake thinking what it will be like for me when I can’t eat drink sleep breathe and also CAN’T SEE and I will go through blind Eternity feeling my way forever. It’s so bloody not fair.

It won’t be long now before the Earth melts or drops into the sun. I don’t much care which. What I want to know is will it finally kill me? If it does, peace at last.

What bloody scares me is the thought that I’ll fall into the sun and die… but then inside the sun I’ll heal again, and die again, and so on forever. Too right it will hurt.

The sun has to die some day. I mean it won’t be day anymore when it happens but you know what I mean. Just my stinking luck if Earth falls into the sun and I keep living anyway, and I have to feel the sun killing me all the time while the nano-things keep me alive for millions millions bloody billions more years till the sun finally burns out. I wonder if I can write words in burning plasma inside the sun like those green ladies from somewhere else taught me once. I wish the green ladies would come back. I hope maybe the

(gap)

Everywhere hot lava. Melting melting everything and I burn all over and it hurts it bloody hurts but as fast as I heal I get burnt again stop it stop it stop.

I can still see a bit with one eye. I’m writing this last part with a black flaky stone against a hard white stone but the stone’s going soft. The sun’s coming closer. After all these millions of years I suddenly remember an old happy song it goes here comes the sun it’s all right, but no it’s NOT all right. Everything is so hot and all melted. I’m sure it will come any

(gap)

At last at last at last billions of years falling into the sun hurry up will I die now or will it get worse now I’ll know if

(gap)

oh damn its not fair

THE CHILDREN OF TIME Stephen Baxter

THE STAR CALLED WORMWOOD Elizabeth Counihan

I could have concluded this anthology with any of several stories, but there is something about the ending of this story that seemed just right, and brings our journey through an apocalyptic future almost full circle.

Elizabeth Counihan is from a writing family. Her father was a BBC journalist and her grandfather a novelist. Elizabeth was a family doctor in the National Health

Service for many years but is now concentrating on writing. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy, Nature Futures and several other magazines and anthologies. She is the editor of the British fantasy magazine Scheherazade.

IN THE WEEK that Anya died a comet approached the Earth. At first a bright spark in the east, it enlarged, trailing a cloud of shimmering white — a glowing snowball, flung into the sky above the frozen landscape of Siberia. Anya did not see it. She lay, ninety-nine years old, in the last ice palace, tended by machines older than she was. Their antennae perceived the new celestial body. Their voices reported it, echoing through vaulted chambers and long-abandoned halls where, here and there, a small creature twitched a whisker or pricked a furry ear before returning to the business of living. The voices whispered in Anna’s room. She could no longer speak but electronic eyes interpreted the movement of her lips, and recorded that her last word was “Wormwood”. Her breath rattled in a last sigh and her eyes closed.

The machines went to the burial place and drew out a core of ice. Anya’s body was wrapped in an embroidered sheet and placed feet first in the bore hole. Finally, as they had been taught, the machines reverently capped her grave with powdered ice and played the music appropriate to the death of a lady of the palace. The sound was heard only by the wolves and bears of the wilderness. Her grave, the last in row upon row of similar graves, lay under the bleak gaze of the comet.

The comet hurtled on, over wrinkled mountains, arid plains, sundrenched ocean. Wild dogs howled at its passing; owls blinked under its bright gaze.

Kuri squatted beside a thorn tree, his shadow black and dwarfish under the equatorial sun. He reached out a dark, bony hand and picked up a fragment of yellow ringlass from the jigsaw of coloured shards at his feet, laying it carefully to one side with pieces he had already chosen. After a few moments’ thought, chin in cupped hand, he selected a second piece, green this time and laid it with the others. He removed his wide-brimmed hat and half-filled it with the selected glass then, rising stiffly, walked towards his house beside the lake. His body was wiry and naked, his knobbly feet bare; without his hat, only a tangle of grey and black hair protected his head from the sun.

His way to the domed building lay across a hundred metres of flat desert, fringed at its margin by dark reeds. From there the jade-green lake stretched into the west. A feather of white vapour spiralled from the volcano on Crocodile Island and dispersed in the shimmering air. Kuri stopped halfway to catch his breath, his throat rasped by the harsh taint of the volcano. He gazed with narrowed eyes, half-blinded by the beauty of his ancient home, placed like a jewel of many colours between him and the lake. At this time of day the windows were almost inaudible, a subdued harmony, but to the sight they blazed with the brilliance of the noonday sun.

There was a flicker of movement near the water. Kuri shaded his eyes with his free hand then grinned and whistled loudly through his fingers. The moving shape bounded towards him on all fours but rose onto hind legs when it reached his side. The creature, yellow-brown like the earth, planted a slender fore paw on each side of his chest. Green eyes, adoring as a dog’s, gazed up at him from a flat, cat-like face. Her tongue rasped his skin.

He bent and kissed her between the ears, then said, “Drink, Jade.”

“Drink? Water? Juice drink?” she answered in her breathy growl. She rubbed her head against his hand and he stroked her under the chin.

“Juice. In the house,” he said. She raced back towards the glowing building, her tail waving like a yellow plume. Kuri followed more slowly still clutching his hat. The glass vibrated gently, picking up the resonance of the house. His feet left one more line of prints in the dusty earth. He looked back; today’s line went only to the thorn tree and the previous day’s reached no further, yet he was very tired. He squinted to see older tracks. There were Jade’s paw marks skittering here, there and everywhere and the bigger marks of her cousins, the wild adapts. He saw the slots of jumpbuck and, with a stir of anxiety, the recent pug marks of a fanged leopard. Plodding into the distance and only faintly discernible were the wide prints of his own dromedary. Was it then so long since he had ridden it inland? He realized with some surprise that it was two months at least. He turned slowly, looking in vain for signs of his own tracks extending further than the thorn tree and the pile of ringlass sparkling in the sun. He looked at his hand, black and wrinkled; at his arm thin and sere as a dead thorn-branch. A shade fell across his soul.

Kuri shrugged and trudged on. He was thirsty and there was work to do on the east window. The dark entrance to his home was cool and inviting below the blazing windows. He ducked to avoid the curved roof of the tunnel and plunged below ground like a fox to earth. Breathing heavily again, he sat down in the cool light of the northern window that glowed high above him. Jade skipped up to him on her hind legs, holding a beaker between her front paws. He drank, and his skin rained cold drops of sweat. He turned to Jade but she had anticipated his next wish, and was proffering a square of damp lake-weed. He smiled at the little creature; in the window light her tawny coat was dappled purple and bronze like a child’s toy. She pirouetted on two legs as if she knew he found her antics comical.

“Good Jade,” he said, wiping his forehead. “You must go out this evening. Play with your friends.”

“Kuri play with Jade?” she said.

“I’m too old to play. Old creatures don’t play.” She dropped to all fours and rubbed against his knee. Using her mouth she took the weed from his hand, growling playfully, shaking her head about; then seeing he wasn’t going to join the game, trotted out of the house to return it to the water.

Kuri sighed and stretched his creaking bones. He wanted to sleep but wanted even more to return to his task. He lurched to his feet and fetched another juice drink from the cold store. He went over to the east side of his dwelling and, with a critical eye, gazed up at the sun-shaped east window, brilliant in orange and yellow and yet transmitting no heat to him. He could not remember who had installed the window — his mother? Perhaps even his grandfather. He frowned trying to recall that distant time when three people had lived here — no four: there had been his brother, Omu, who had died from a snakebite.

He bent stiffly and picked up his krar, twanging its three strings in turn. A high keening resonated from the window above him. He shook his head in distaste then played a series of chords. The keening descended in pitch but was still unpleasing to his ear. This must have been the original artist’s idea of the rising sun — too harsh, too strident for him.

He emptied his hat of the glass pieces and piled them onto a basketful he had selected on previous days. Then he ambled round the chamber picking up tools here and there, taking them and the glass over to the east side. Finally he uttered a word of command and a wooden platform emerged creakily from the wall and swung towards him, lowering itself to floor level. He piled everything on to it and clambered up, directing the platform until it had risen on a swivelling arm to the roof. Even so close to the blazing sun of the window he was neither dazzled nor overheated, such was the wonder of ringlass.

Once Kuri had decided the effect he wanted he worked quickly, tapping out crescents of citrine and gamboge from the solar orb. As he removed the pieces the true heat of the day blasted through the lattice like a wind from the volcano.

He mopped his forehead with the brim of his hat then jammed it on his head. The lattice itself writhed in discomfort and gratefully hugged the replacement sections, softer shades of rose and ochre, that he offered it. As each new piece was inserted he tuned it with his krar, slicing tiny slivers of glass from the sections he was altering until both sight and sound merged with the image in his head.

By the time he lowered the mechanism to the ground the sun was sinking towards the western window which already vibrated gently in anticipation. Kuri slumped to the floor, too exhausted even to fetch himself another drink. He looked around for Jade but she was not sleeping in her usual place, under the cool light of the northwest spiral, the only silent window. In his mind’s eye he saw her, among the reeds, skipping and pouncing with her adapt cousins. That would be only right.

He licked dry lips. She must prepare for a future without him — quite soon, he thought. But then he heard her familiar call, the repeated little noise she made when she was bringing him food. She bounded in through the entrance tunnel, a wriggling fish held in her jaws. She dropped it at his feet and ran outside again, mewing joyfully. Kuri smiled, shaking his head. “I’m not hungry,” he whispered to himself.

Jade returned with another fish and skipped around while he persuaded his body to stand upright. He killed both fish with practised efficiency, then put them in a net.

“Let’s eat outside,” Kuri said, knowing that would please her. He collected a knife and his cooking gear and went through the tunnel.

There was an evening wind blowing in from the lake, bringing the soda tang of its water and the sulphur of the volcano. The smell increased his thirst.

“Drink, Jade,” he croaked, “water this time.” He cleaned the fish and lit the stove while she fetched a pouch of fresh water from the purifier. Dropping the pouch in front of Kuri she ran, snarling, at a couple of vultures that were eyeing the fish. They flapped off, one remaining at a distance, shrouded on the dusky sand, the other swooping in low watchful circles. Kuri drank deeply, then tossed the fish into a pan, where they sizzled. The entrails he threw to Jade, who worried them enthusiastically.

The music of the west window rose to a crescendo. Kuri turned towards the lake. All the brilliance of the windows on the eastern side had been quenched by approaching night and from his point of view the building was in shadow, silhouetted against the western sky. The west window itself was hidden by the dark beehive of his home. Behind it the waters of the lake changed from jade to molten crimson as they received the sun. Lapped in harmony, he grinned for sheer joy. The sound of the west window was perfect; but when he thought of the east — something still lacked. He frowned and turned back to his cooking. “I’m not hungry,” he repeated under his breath.

As if they had heard him a flock of tiny birds flew in from the lake, shrilling above the sonorous tones of the window. Most darted straight for their roosts in the thorn bushes and palm trees along the shore, but a canny few landed on the ground beside Kuri and bounced up and down waiting for scraps. Kuri tore off a chunk of fish, put a morsel in his mouth and scattered the remainder well clear of Jade. She was crouched beside him, grooming herself. Now her ears pricked and she stretched, unsheathing her claws.

“Leave them, Jade,” Kuri said. “Fish is much nicer.” He gave her a piece, and she tossed it into the air to cool it, catching it deftly, then eating it with little growls of pleasure. Kuri swilled the last of his mouthful with the aid of another drink of water. The music trailed away. He turned back once more. The water was now darkest indigo, the only other colour a dusky ember-red gleaming fitfully from the volcano. The birds retreated and were silent. He heard the lapping of the water, the soughing of the wind, Jade’s sleepy purring. He smiled down at her, the thing he loved best. Everything was as it should be, as it always had been, throughout his long life. Death would come when it came.

He looked eastwards where the stars were already brilliant.

Something was different, an unfamiliar celestial body, faint, haloed in white.

Were his eyes failing at last? No -everything else was as sharp and bright as usual, the stars, the planets, the orbiters that his ancestors had sent into space thousands of years in the past. But now there was a new thing in the heavens.

Nearby he heard the cough of a fanged leopard. He whistled for Jade and the two retreated indoors.

After three nights Kuri realized that the new star was a comet. Each night it was bigger, at first a hazy patch of bright light, then round like a tiny sun, surrounded by a white corona. On the third night he saw the tail, spreading out, spangled by the stars, then lost among them. He had little knowledge of such things, whether this one had been predicted by astronomers or was a new visitor to the sky. Was it hurtling towards the Earth on a path of destruction or would it pass him by? Were there any wise men left alive to solve this riddle? Or was he the last human stargazer to see and wonder?

The next morning he donned loose trousers and went to saddle up his reluctant dromedary. She had been free for so many weeks that, apart from coming to him for titbits, she had decided to ignore him. She had also elected to forget her name, “Beast” (short for “The Beast Who Spits”) because that was what she did best.

Each time Kuri approached her she lumbered off to a safe distance, then stopped and stared superciliously. Jade was no use in this situation. When she perceived Kuri’s difficulty she tried to help but the dromedary spat with supreme accuracy and, when the adapt approached snarling, lashed out dangerously.

In the end guile and persistence won but not before the cool of the morning had been burned away. By then Kuri was gasping painfully and his sweat-soaked trousers clung to his legs. Determination burned through his pounding headache. The work could not wait. Grumbling, the dromedary knelt and he climbed up. Jade yowled piteously but he told her he would be back for supper; she was to catch some fish and watch out for crocodiles.

Once started, Beast trundled down the familiar road and Kuri rested, even slept a little, huddled under a blanket and with his hat jammed on his head. When he opened his eyes again the lake had disappeared behind the hills. The air shimmered. Even the sound of the dromedary’s footsteps was stifled. Her rancid smell enveloped him like a filthy cloak. He flapped his hat at the flies hustled around his eyes. He reached for a water pouch, draining it in a few gulps. They passed a troop of baboons, lolling in the shade of a rock, too idle to pester him for food. The only living things in the sun were two basking mambas, coiled like black ropes.

They reached the city by early afternoon, descending from the barren hills to a sudden oasis, a ring of green foliage and coloured blossoms, its walls. To Kuri it was simply “The City”, the only one he had ever seen, although he knew that it was one of many and that once it had had a name. The gateway was in the form of a rearing elephant, one foot raised. But there was no malice in the gate. It recognized the visitor and trumpeted a fanfare of welcome. He and the dromedary passed easily beneath the archway of its legs. Kuri did not so much as glance at the massive stone foot poised above him ready to crush any intruder.

As always the city was full of life. Birds fluted and chirruped from every tree. Jewelled carp flashed in the shaded pools and streams. Butterflies drifted on the air like floating blossoms. On the paving there were black-eyed snakes and amber scorpions. Baboons, jumping from the trees, noisily demanded attention. He glimpsed wandering smallbuck at each turn of the way.

But there were no other humans, ever.

Kuri steered his animal between a towering basalt jackal and a fanged leopard formed from living bone. Wild adapts peered from the windows of both. He smiled and waved to them, pleased that they, rather than the baboons, had found a way inside. The dromedary continued along the familiar way, following the curves of the Great Snake Building and reached a courtyard surrounding a central pool. Here he dismounted, leaving her to drink and graze at will. He lowered himself, gulping clear water from the pool, then pulled himself onto a marble bench in the shade of the palms and oleanders. He lay inert, cooled by a breeze that was free, here, from the taint of the volcano. When his strength had returned a little he made for the largest of the buildings framing the courtyard, a giant crystal made in the shape of a krar; the place where ringlass was still being formed, year after year, century after century.

He knew exactly what he wanted.

It was dusk as he reached the lake. Beast had been wayward again and difficult to catch. He had stopped several times on the way to rest and drink. Now the volcano’s fumes were black against the first stars. The comet already blazed in the eastern sky behind him.

There were two shapes in front of his house. The smaller bounded towards him uttering squeals of delight. He clambered down, carrying a basket of the new ringlass, then he dismissed the dromedary with a slap on the rump. She loped off, grunting. Jade was upon him, springing onto her hind legs, trying to lick his face. The second, larger adapt hesitated, as if making to run away, but remained. Kuri heard a faint growl. The creature’s tail was held high, bristling and defiant. It called to Jade, a plaintive mew. She looked back and answered, then darted away, stopping and looking back at Kuri.

“It’s good, Jade,” he said. “It’s Brown Boy, isn’t it? Go with him.” But Jade, after touching noses with the other adapt, ran back to Kuri. Brown Boy trotted off into the shadow of the reed beds, from where he continued to call at intervals.

She had caught more fish for him but, when he had cleaned them, he found himself unable to eat. Jade, as usual, devoured the entrails but she was clearly worried, running up to him, saying, “Kuri eat. Kuri eat.” When they went to bed she nuzzled against him, but he said, “I can’t make love to you any more, Jade. I’m too old, too tired.” He stroked her belly.

He heard the other adapt calling from the reed beds. “Go with Brown Boy. He will give you cubs,” he whispered.

But she would not.

Kuri continued his reconstruction of the east window. He removed the centre of the solar shape, now a corona of pale golds and oranges, then fitted the inner circle with tiny beads of plain ringlass, something he had never used before on any of the windows. As he tuned this new work with his krar his absorption deepened. He did not stop to eat — had no desire for food. Instead he drank -water, juice, more water. Even Jade’s plaintive cries failed to distract him.

By night the comet grew until its light was bright as moonlight.

Kuri completed his work on the third day. The new ringlass chimed in tune with the krar; the outer rings of coloured glass resonated in harmony. He was satisfied.

At sunset he found himself unable to stand. He crawled through the tunnel, then knelt on the sand facing the lake, waiting for the night. For the last time he watched the sun plunge towards the water and stain it red as blood. He heard the farewell song of the west window. Jade crept up and crouched beside him, whimpering. He patted her head.

Darkness fell.

Then there was a new vibration, faint at first but soon emerging high and clear, like the resonance of a glass harp. A light rose behind Kuri but he did not look back but gazed transfixed at his creation.

The light struck the East Window. He saw the comet, brilliant as a second moon, reflected in the diamond-white centre. He heard a voice reaching towards Earth from the depths of space, growing louder and clearer. The outer circles of the window chimed in marvellous harmony. And then, new and unexpected, the other windows took up the song — the blazing chords of the South, the wayward dissonance of the North, the trumpeted glory of the West. The dark dome vibrated, wavering before his eyes. He knew that startled birds took flight from the reeds, jackals cried in the distance. He could see shadows beside him. He realized that Brown Boy was beside Jade, that a small troop of adapts had formed a semicircle in front of the house.

But this was only a dim halo of awareness at the fringes of sight. With all his being he gazed at the window on to Paradise, heard the music of the spheres.

He slumped forward.

In the morning Brown Boy called to Jade to come with him. She had lain the whole night in vigil beside Kuri’s body, crying his name. Brown Boy nuzzled her gently. She looked up at him, questioning, pleading, her eyes reflecting the colour of the lake. She rose and stretched, then paced with drooping tail to the edge of the water. He followed her and like her, scooped a mouthful of pumice pebbles. Following her lead he deposited them on the curled body of the last in the line of his creators. Jade ran back for more pebbles. Brown Boy lifted his head and called. More adapts emerged from the reeds.

Soon Kuri, the last of his kind, lay buried in the very place where his primal ancestors had first lifted their heads from the earth to ask “what?” and “why?”.

The adapts spent one more night gazing in wonder at the white blaze of Kuri’s window, swaying to the music that stirred their blood. At last Brown Boy looped his tail about Jade’s shoulders and drew her away to begin a new life.

The windows of Kuri’s house continued to greet each phase of the day but as the newcomer faded the white heart of the East Window became silent until, perhaps, in the years to come the comet should retrace its path, to remind the Earth of the beings that had ruled it for so short a time.

But now the star that had been called Wormwood continued westward across Africa. Its brightness startled flocks of birds into wakefulness, caused great beasts to trumpet and bray, glinted in the eyes of prowling raptors and hopping rodents. It traced a path of wandering silver across the ocean, glinting on metalled dolphins and the gauzy wings of flying-fish.

Somewhere along the coast of Brazil a group of tree-like beings waved their branches in the wind. The branch tips brushed against each other, connections that wound and unwound. As the comet poured its light over them, the light-sensitive tips quested upwards. Others whipped out, clasping their fellows. “What?” they whispered. “Why?”