BEYOND EXTINCTION - Even the concept of truth is a lie Read online

  Being this close socially to a numan family is a first for Jack. He has worked with them, seen them in public, but has never been present when they are relaxing and enjoying themselves. Especially as a family. And, as much as he hates and fears numans, he has to admit that he likes Aleksi and his family.

  "What do you think of our recruit?" Alice asks him while Aleksi and his children chase the delighted Max, who dodges them as he clenches their ball in his teeth. "They certainly seem to like you and they love Max."

  "If they love Max, they can't be all bad," he says. They don't seem bad. If only all numans were like this.

  Max rockets past, brushing Jack's leg, the ball fixed in a grin stretching to his ears. The shrieking numan kids are in hot pursuit. "Max, you beast, give them their ball!" shouts Jack.

  He turns back to the laughing Alice and picks up their conversation. "Looking at the symbols and patterns on Aleksi's clothes, any idea what says he is married?"

  Alice reaches out for a generous handful of barbecued asparagus wafting past on a servant's tray. They both notice Mike has the latest model. It is efficient, with better command protocols and better productivity, but somehow a servant with six arms looks wrong. Very wrong.

  "Good asparagus," she says, giving him some. The other five trays have offerings of contrasting colors and textures. "We could try the pmeat canapés if you like. Mike has put on an exceptionally tasty selection. I think you would find them interesting – they are different flavors and textures from what you have had in pubs and restaurants. I expect Galen helped Mike with supplies: he has some very upmarket sources. Do you want some?"

  "Maybe later," Jack says, his eyes distracted by Alice's smile. But the writer in him never sleeps completely. "Do you know the contents of the pmeat base? I tried to find out but it's covered by a secret patent held by the World Council."

  "All I know is that it is vegetable-based and that it comes from FedOz. The cruise ships take immigrants to FedOz and return packed with the pmeat base. It's processed to local tastes at World Council facilities in each country before being sold through big commercial enterprises like Amazon Worldwide."

  She hands more asparagus to Jack, shoves some in her mouth and, with the ease of someone always multitasking, carries on talking. "Going back to the subject of Aleksi, nothing in his dress says he's married. It's not necessary. Every numan must marry and have children between the ages of fourteen and eighteen. Now he's twenty-seven, numans would not even call him 'he' or his wives 'she.' The sexual part of their lives is over. Numans never get involved again, never think about sex except in the choice of partners for their children. There aren't any single adult numans except through bereavement."

  I knew this, but I never put it together. What else have I missed?

  Across the garden, through the crowd of milling people, Max is still clowning with the kids. Jack can see Galen talking to Mike but watching Alice. Galen sees Alice bite off some asparagus and pop the rest into Jack's mouth.

  When Galen looks at me, it's like being examined in a specimen jar.

  *

  A storm is lashing the windows of The Plantation tea shop near Mark's home in Thaxted's east end. He is drinking tea, waiting for the rain to ease. He drank coffee in this same shop when it was called The Coffee Plantation, but that was years ago. Now, it sells only the teas from the Welsh terraces and the snacks that numans enjoy.

  He has his battered mediamat on the table and he marks off in different colors all his job possibilities: red for dead, yellow for applied and possible, green for not yet applied but maybe. The list in red is longest. The green list has jobs so repulsive to him that he shudders. A catch-and-kill stray dogs operative. If I get that desperate…

  A human girl, small and thin, brings his tea and a numan biscuit. Her youthful innocence gives her an attractiveness destined to be short-lived.

  "Do you need anything more?" she asks, and something in her voice makes him look more closely at her. She has an intensity about her, an impression of desperation.

  "What do you suggest?"

  "There's not much here for humans," she says, looking deeply into his eyes. "Maybe there is something that I can offer you at home."

  Is she offering what I think she is offering? She's only a kid. "Maybe," he says cautiously.

  "I can't live on what they pay me here and I can't get another job," she says. "The numies get all the good jobs and we get all the rubbish."

  "That's certainly true!"

  "If you can give me some money, I can do anything you want. Anything."

  "How much money?"

  "Not a lot. I'm not greedy. I just need enough to make up my wages. If you like it, we could have a regular arrangement."

  She looks so young. I should just give her money. Mark looks at her face again, her immature body hardly showing female lines. He is aware of his temptation being inflamed by not getting any sex since Chrissy walked out. "I could meet you when you finish work," he says.

  "I have to work until eight this evening," she says, a quick glance over her shoulder towards her numan boss who is checking on her from behind the counter. "Twelve-hour day."

  "I'll wait at the corner for you." He watches her scurry off, scooping up used plates and mugs. How old is she? Fifteen? Sixteen? Maybe we can help each other.

  Mark returns to his jobs list, his anxiety rising immediately. In the past, he has never been good at handling adversity and stress. This time, it will be different. He will succeed. He will not ask for federation handouts. I must get a job, something, soon. I'm already dipping into the savings that Chrissy left for me.

  Four hours later he is waiting on the corner without knowing the waitress's name. The rain washes over him and seeps through the splits in his coat. Why am I doing this?

  She emerges from The Plantation, a waif without a coat, and turns towards him. "Thank god, you came," she says as she rushes up to him and takes his arm. "I don't even have any money for a numie bus. I would have to walk a mile in this weather."

  "Don't you have a coat?"

  "I don't have anything."

  He wants to offer her his coat but what is the point? It is far too big for her and she is already soaked.

  "My name's Mark," he says. "What's yours?"

  "Paula. I like your name. Do you like mine?"

  "Yes. It's very pretty."

  They splash through the streets, not bothering to duck when the numie limousines power by and throw sheets of road water over them.

  "This is it," he tells her as he guides her to his front door.

  "Oh, you do live in luxury, Mark," she says, awe in her voice.

  Inside, while she stares around, he finds dry clothes and a tatty towel that Chrissy left behind.

  "You can go upstairs and change into these," he says kindly. I don't know what I'm going to do with her but I won't be buying sex from her. She's just a kid.

  "I want to stay with you," she replies and strips off her wet clothes, watching him do the same.

  They towel themselves and dress. "How old are you?" he asks, the memory of her boyish body fresh in his mind.

  "Sixteen!" she says defiantly. "Nearly sixteen!"

  "No work permit?" he asks.

  "No. I'm one of the slave class. That's what humans are being turned into. But better than being killed by the numies, I suppose."

  Mark's head jerks up. "Numans don't kill people," he tells her. "That's just a story to frighten children."

  Paula, wrapping the oversized clothes around herself and sitting carefully next to him on the sofa, says hesitantly, "I'm sorry, Mark. I didn't mean to make you angry. Do you have anything to eat? I haven't eaten since last night."

  The poor kid is desperate. She'll say and do anything. "You haven't made me angry," he says. "I'll get some food for you."

  *

  Jack was expecting an easy-going evening with Alice but somehow Galen had been included as they walked back to Jack's cottage after the welcome party for Aleksi. N
ow the three of them sit talking in the low-ceilinged living room, with its exposed timber beams and its small windows filtering the late afternoon light and creating an atmosphere of living a few hundred years ago. Max is so deeply asleep that he does not stir when the servant rolls in with drinks and glances off his sprawled body.

  Galen warily sips his first gin and tonic. "Galen, don't worry if you don't like it," says Jack. "Get the servant to bring something you do like."

  Alice leans over, takes the drink. "I'll share this with Jack," she says and orders kiwi juice and ice as a replacement.

  Jack wants to like Galen. He is a close work friend of Alice, but even Max does not like him and that is very rare. Maybe we both worry about losing Alice.

  "We are getting another numan to join Aleksi at the Center," Galen tells Jack casually, too casually for Galen's direct style. "One of our researchers decided to leave the project. We are giving her some extra money, an introduction to a university research center in FedOz and paying for her DickTick to cruise there first class."

  "Alice told me that you were taking on another numan," says Jack. "It's the beginning of the end for humans in Abbotsford, isn't it? Other numan breeder families will follow Aleksi and your new employee. In a couple of years, every house and cottage in the village will have been bought at fantastic prices and have numans living in them. What I can't understand is how you, a human, can allow this. Don't you see we are being squeezed out of every corner of Europe?"

  Galen gives him the specimen-jar look. "You must feel that your book on human extinction is being overtaken by events," he says in his peculiar way of spearing sore spots with his words.

  "Humans have had a good run – 30,000 years since Homo sapiens beat Neanderthals in the evolutionary race," Jack says. "We haven't been good custodians of the planet. In fact, we have been the deadliest creatures ever to exist. If we are wiped off the face of the Earth, it will give other species a chance to survive. Unless the numans carry on where we leave off."

  "Jack!" breaks in Alice. "Stop being melodramatic. Humans are not that bad. Except maybe you when you won't eat pmeat."

  "Okay." He laughs at her protest. "But it's true. Humans are facing extinction, maybe in fifty years, maybe in a century. Numans have small evolutionary advantages that humans simply cannot match. And they have the United Gulf States World Bank that shuffles money around the globe to buy whatever they need. Humans just can't compete anymore."

  Both Alice and Galen sit silently, an edgy tension as they contemplate Jack.

  "Human extinction won't take fifty years, Jack," says Galen gravely. "We have the latest figures on the spread of numans. They are not encouraging for humans."

  "So have I," counters Jack. "Latest Ministry of Interior figures."

  "They are false," says Galen. "They were... softened... to avoid exacerbating civil unrest. Numans and their homes are being attacked all over Britain, all over Europe, all over the Americas. The attacks are censored off the news, but they are happening."

  Jack is suddenly very alert. His research on extinction, all his arguments and predictions, are rooted in official figures. He thinks of the hints that Alice gave him, on one of their walks with Max, and his failed attempts to track down any new totals or even the organization she mentioned.

  "What do your figures show?" he asks cautiously, a chill spreading through him. Sometimes he wishes he lived a life like Max, where happiness and security are no more than having enough to eat and a ball to chase.

  "Numan penetration of the human environment is over ninety percent across FedEurope and FedUK," says Galen. "In many places, it has hit one hundred percent. There are very few places like Abbotsford where humans have held on to good property and work. In another generation, there will be so few humans that, as a species, they will not be viable anywhere outside FedOz."

  Galen's calm, matter-of-fact words hit Jack like a body blow. This is everything he has suspected and more. He needs time to digest it and come back at Galen with questions like, "Why is it happening?" But he can see no hesitation in Galen's cold eyes. Who is Galen to know all this? To speak with such authority?

  "Jack," says Galen intensely, "I have given you something. I will give you more. Can you give Ali and me something? We are both interested in your experience with banya – what you felt and thought when you melded with the orangutan. Ali said you made detailed notes. Can we see them?"

  The proposal leaves Jack uneasy. Where is Alice's loyalty? With me or with Galen?

  "Absolutely, no problem," Jack says, in spite of his misgivings. "I will give Alice a copy later and she can share it with you."

  Alice smiles at him. But is the smile for him or for his agreement to hand over his notes to her boss? She asked earlier about his banya experience and he protected her by not revealing the depth of horror that he experienced. Now Galen is here to ask again.

  *

  Eighty miles west of Abbotsford, in the revamped military naval base at Portsmouth, dock after dock is crammed with the gigantic DickTick NewStart cruise ships that carry humans across the world to FedOz. Patti, another face among so many, trudges towards her ship, the DickStar, one of the 10,000-passenger party ships tied up alongside NewLife Quay 23. It is early evening and she should feel optimistic, but a final farewell with her family has left her sad and anxious.

  Once on the ship, she will have no way back: it is the ticket condition – no return. Ever. But she can make free video calls to her family, and her acceptance for emigration will guarantee priority for any family members who want to join her in FedOz.

  Have I made the best choice? I could have avoided it. She was given the option of a job in FedOz or going into stasis, the Center's term for an obscure quarantine job without challenge or future while being constantly monitored for any breach of confidentiality.

  Galen had been very clear. "You have produced exceptional data here and we are grateful. Now we want to move you on to something much bigger as an alternative to stasis. Do you want that?"

  "Yes," she had replied. She had already tried to retract her outburst and her demand to leave the Abbotsford project. Galen had brushed aside the retraction without discussion and she had felt panic at the prospect of facing life in stasis.

  "We want you to head a government Policy Department unit monitoring emotional reactions among Newlifers in New Britain State, northern FedOz. You will be a human among humans."

  She had asked the expected questions, established the high priority of the project. She had not bothered with her pay or privileges because they would come with the pay scale and she could check them herself.

  "What about food supply in FedOz?" she had asked. "Some reports say the system cannot cope with human demands because their animal meat diet is thirty times more costly to the environment than plant-based diets."

  "They are being fed adequately," Galen had replied. "You will have no problems in that regard."

  Adequately. Not quite the life of prosperity and plenty advertised in the DickTick program. She let it go.

  And now she is making her way to a DickTick alpha cabin, with a balcony and sea views, on the aging DickStar.

  *

  "I don't think Galen was pleased when you didn't leave with him," says Jack in bed with Alice, their intimate warmth easing his anxiety about her relationship with her boss.

  "He wants me to stay human, so he must accept my human needs and pleasures," she says. He likes the way her voice softens in bed, her warmth all the more enveloping, and her words more elliptical, light or dreamy, sometimes precise in an imprecise way that seems to fill him with visions beyond day and logic.

  "I want you to stay human, very human, in my arms and my life." Though I'm not sure what "stay human" means.

  She snuggles her face deeper into him as they sleep.

  "Ali! Wake up! Wake up! There's a disaster happening!" shrieks Twinkle, Alice's phone. "Director Galen wants to talk to you but I need to tell you first!"

  Alice jackkni
fes from sleeping to awake and grabs Twinkle. Jack is immediately awake, too, and Max leaps to his feet.

  "Put Galen through," Alice tells Twinkle.

  "But I want to tell you!"

  "Put the Director through! Now!"

  "Oh, you never let me tell you things."

  "Now!"

  "Okay!"

  "Balen," rumbles Galen, as calm as a day with storms. "We have an emerg—"

  His voice is cut off as Alice switches off the speaker and turns to Jack. "Make sure Max is all right," she says. "You know how upset he gets when Twinkle is hysterical." She turns back to the phone. "What's the emergency, Galen?"

  She listens for a moment, her face flashing with alarm.

  "What is it?" Jack whispers.

  "Aleksi's house is being attacked by humans," she says urgently. "Daleksi and two of the children have been injured. There's a crowd throwing stones. We must help them!"

  Jack jumps from the bed, just missing Max, as Alice tells Galen, "We can be there in five minutes."

  Now it starts again, Jack thinks as they grab the first clothes they can, make sure Max is safely inside the cottage, and run to the car. Jack pulls up a loose garden stake to use as a weapon.

  He saw it in Cambridge and London: human mobs attacking incoming numans. It happens everywhere, as Galen said, but it never makes the news. Not even the attack where a numan family was deliberately trapped inside their home and burned to death. He had been on the street by chance and did nothing to stop the attack – he still hears the screams of the children when his mind ambushes him with memories. Never again! He shudders and pushes his car's power lever to maximum, accelerating so fast the gate barely opens in time.

  "Jack, slow down! You'll kill us. They're safe at the moment in the cellar."

  "They are not safe. Stones are just the start. It will be fire next. Look!"

  She sees a light, a flickering flame among the mob as they screech to a halt and leap out. The crowd of 30 or more men and a few women are shouting, faces pulled into the ugliness of hate. And everyone is moving, finding stones to throw, shaking their fists. There is a smell of burning in the air but the flames have not caught the house alight.