Anderson Poul In Memoriam

The last man on Earth knew not that he was. Nor would he have cared. He had met very few other humans in his life, and none since his woman coughed herself into silence. How long ago that happened, he did not know either. He kept no count of years, nor of anything else. She lay blurred in his memory, but so did most that was more than a few days past. Day-by-day survival took all his wits and strength, such as they were.

She had not been the last woman. That one had died in Novosibirsk. To her it was nameless; the crumbling buildings simply provided dens and fuel against the winters, with a stock of rats and other small game for her to trap. Her family had laired there until, one by one, sickness or accident overtook each and they became food for the rest. A brother lived long enough that his feeble attentions got her pregnant, but it was a stillbirth and she ate it also. Nevertheless it left her weakened. When she fell and broke a leg she was helpless and starved to death. The small creatures cleaned her bones.

The last man was likewise born in what had been a city, in his case Atlanta. He fled it when a gang of cannibals arrived and settled in to stalk its streets and hallways for meat. Several generations ago their sort had been common, but the prey dwindled fast. These few soon perished in various ways. By that time the last man was elsewhere, and thus missed the satisfaction of learning about their fates.

In his wanderings he came upon a girl equally footloose. She fled, terrified. Having eaten more recently, he was able to run her down. But then he was not ungentle, and afterward she accompanied him willingly. He meant a slight added measure of food and protection.

She had no name and few words, which she seldom used. His childhood had been more fortunate, leaving him with some language and scraps of tradition. Those led him to grope east across sun-seared barrens until, lurching and croaking, he and his mate found a swamp. Although risen sea level brought a salt tide upstream twice a day, the water was not too brackish to drink. In and around it, fish, frogs, snakes, insects, worms, roots, tubers, and leaves furnished a meager diet if the pair worked hard at their gathering and trapping. They were unaware of the lead, mercury, and organic toxins not yet broken down.

Indeed, had anyone spoken to them of contamination, they would have stared uncomprehending. Plankton, krill, soil requirements, ecological balance, the food chain, its broad and vulnerable base, ozone, greenhouse effect, famine, nuclear warheads, positive feedback, mass extinction were noises they had never heard. Their world was what it was, hot, harsh, mostly parched and bare, scoured by rains that turned the rivers to mudflows and uncovered bedrock to the sky. So had it been and always would be. Once...