V
"Would you like to see our control room?"
His father held out his big hand, and they floated together down the corridor into the large, hemispheric nerve center of the spaceship. People stood or sat silently at instruments, their faces vague. There was gravity in the control center, and with its pressure, Jim realized he had to go to the latrine. A man sat at a console, and they went over to him, "Jimmy, this is Commander Hamilton."
The strong coffee-brown face turned to him and smiled. Commander Medgar Hamilton! Who'd been skipper of the Leif Erickson, the first deep-space ship! Jim looked down at himself, dirty and unshaven, and wished he could bathe and change his clothes.
". . . last surviving human on Earth," his father was saying. "Luckily he had the presence of mind to go to the spaceport and wait for us to come home."
He had to find a latrine! He'd seen a sign somewhere along the corridor: MEN. Then he saw it again, down a little alley behind some garbage cans. He had to push hard to get the door open, and when he got in, he saw that trash had been piled behind it. It gave him a sinking feeling.
The latrine was large, even had rows of shower stalls, but everything was unpainted galvanized iron, with blooms of corrosion, and streaked and fouled with excrement. He was shocked. He wandered up and down innumerable aisles looking for a place to use, but everything was too filthy to approach.
James Carrigan woke up and it was daylight. He hated dreams that ended like that. The skin of his face told him it was cold, and briefly he considered going back to sleep. He knew he couldn't, though. With a groan he crawled, bleak and uncomfortable, from under the layers of drapes that served him as bedding. His dad had been in the dream; he couldn't remember just how. He'd died when Jim was twelve, but after twenty-five years he still dreamed of him now and then.
Shivering, he relieved himself at the head of a dead escalator, then shuffled to the bank of soft chairs in front of the viewing wall and slowly sat down. The landing area was a reinforced concrete field, dotted with storm drains and studded irregularly with abandoned shuttlecraft and asteroid tugs. Yesterday's skim of snow was starting to melt in the morning sun. He remembered what he'd promised himself the day before, when he'd finished the last two candy bars from the last shop in the terminal. But he feared leaving, even temporarily. Someday a ship was sure to come back from space. Deep space; if any crews in-system were still alive, they'd have come back by now. But there weren't many deep-space ships: three he thought, or maybe four. If he left the terminal, he might miss the only chance he'd ever have.
He'd suppressed even the thought that the deep-space ships too might have carried the plague with them, might be caught in hyperspace with their crews dead.
He had to have food though, and if he waited, he'd get too weak to hunt. A ship would do him no good if he lay dead of starvation. He should have hunted yesterday. No ship had come yesterday.
He went to his water pitcher for a drink, but it was frozen. He'd eat snow while he hunted. He could build another fire when he got back, and thaw it then.
He'd planned his hunt in advance. Beef was the most practical game. He got the heavy ballpeen hammer he'd found in the terminal machine shop. Cattle weren't wild like jackrabbits or deer. He'd walk up to a cow and slug it on the head with the hammer, hit it with all his strength. He patted the pocket with the knife in it. When he'd killed it, he'd cut a piece off, a big piece, and bring it back with him.
* * *
He went out through a service door; the public exits had been electrically operated, and were immovable now. Coming out of the shadow of the building, he was surprised at how warm the sun felt. Bending, he packed a small ball of snow and let it melt in his mouth. Bread and water for breakfast; hold the bread, he thought, and chuckled, then started west across the landing area. A kilometer farther on he stopped. The chain link fence ahead was beyond his ability to climb; he needed to find a gate. There was one around on the east side, but that was a long walk away. He'd been living on candy bars ever since the power went off, and was weak from malnutrition. He saw a gate a few hundred meters north, and despite already being leg weary, he hurried to it. It was ajar, its electromagnetic lock dead.
The sunshine was transient, and as he walked across the rolling plain, gray clouds cut it off. The crisp tawny bunch grasses—grama and buffalo grass, mostly—were frozen humps beneath his feet, causing him to stumble occasionally. Even so he began to feel better, stronger, from the unfamiliar activity and circulatory stimulation. And misread this, thinking he'd gotten a true second wind. Also, the exercise had dulled the hunger that had gnawed him. Raising his gaze from the ground, he looked around for cattle. He'd already noticed manure: old dry disks of it, and some not so old. Ahead in the distance lay the mighty Front Range, rearing tilted white planes above timberline, hiding its rugged peaks in clouds. Behind him lay the terminal building, perhaps two and a half kilometers away now. The distance sent a pang of anxiety through him.
Ahead was a barbed wire stock fence, typical of those still used on native ranges. When he came to it he rested briefly, standing so he wouldn't get his pants wet. He found a place where the top wire was low and a bit slack, and pushing down on it, swung first one leg over and then the other. A barb caught in the sleeve of his outermost shirt, and shivering, feeling threatened, he carefully disengaged it. His brief sense of strength and well-being had evaporated.
A kilometer and a half farther, the ground sloped down moderately into a shallow, rounded draw. When he reached the bottom and started up the other side, he tired badly, and actually began to sweat a little. At the top he stopped to rest, breathing heavily, head down. Wind had begun to blow across the bare grassland from the east, and he was quickly chilled. It occurred to him that he might not find any cattle, and the thought filled him with despair. If he didn't, he might starve. He should, he thought, have gone hunting a week ago, with candy bars in his pockets to give him strength.
Doggedly he went on then. Just ahead was another draw, deeper and steeper, and as he crossed the curving hilltop, he saw cattle grazing along the lower slopes and in the bottom, where the dead grass was taller. There were about ten of them; he didn't trouble to count. Slowly, carefully he walked down, gripping the hammer tightly, weakness forgotten. As he came nearer, they raised their faces to stare, and several took tentative sidling steps away from his line of approach. Then one old range cow turned away, trotting off smoothly, and they all began to run, breaking into a rocking gallop when the scarecrow figure charged after them. Their strong haunches carried them easily up the opposite slope, or up the draw or down it as they scattered.
Carrigan rushed on after the nearest, across the rounded bottom and a little way up the other side, until the cruel pull of gravity burned his thighs and lungs. Stopping, he almost fell, then let himself drop. The slope faced east, and earlier the sun had thawed the snow away there, leaving a skin of mud beneath the thin grass, a thin grease atop a frozen base. He sat there for a while. His anger and frustration had lasted no longer than his sudden burst of energy, and been replaced by dull resignation.
"Ah, bay, tsay, d' Katt schlafft in d' Schnee. D' Schnee geh fit, und d' Katt schlafft in d' Dritt." Or something like that. ". . . the snow melted and the cat slept in the mud." It must have been thirty years ago he'd learned it. What was that kid's name? His family had talked German at home.
Painfully James got to his feet and forced himself on up the hill. From the top, the land sloped toward a creek maybe two kilometers ahead, bordered with cottonwoods. Beyond the creek, the foothills began with a long hogback, ridges rising behind ridges in a series of increasing height. There was forest on the east-facing slopes. Several of the cattle he'd chased were grazing on the dead grass not far below, and they paused to look up at him.
These were no penned dairy cows. He'd been foolish, he realized, to think he could just walk up to one and kill it. He looked back at the terminal building, small in the distance, and shivered hard, uncontrollably. A few snowflakes had begun to ride the growing wind, and suddenly anxious, he began to walk back down into the draw, toward the terminal. A man could live quite awhile without food, he told himself. Long enough for a ship to come.
Before he started back up the other side, he rested, tired and weak, gathering his will, dreading the moderate climb, then plodded slowly upward, stopping every four or five steps. By the time he'd hauled himself to the top, the snowflakes had thickened, and the increased wind bit into him. The ground was white again, and the stems of grama waved in the wind. He tucked his hands beneath his crossed arms and started on again, stumbling occasionally.
Soon there was only flat land between him and the terminal, flat land and slanting snowflakes. He lowered his head into the wind and pushed on, the snow halfway to the tops of his low-cut shoes already. His eyes were fixed on the ground a meter or two in front of his feet, but blankly, and he walked right into the barbed wire fence before he saw it, the barbs puncturing trousers and skin. He recoiled and fell backward into the snow, a tight whining moan welling from his throat. Eyes squinting, hugging his slightly injured legs to him, he swore softly, almost sobbing, a wave of self-pity washing over him. He didn't get up until the snow soaked through the seat of his two pairs of pants.
When he arose, he was shivering again, and looked across the fence into the blowing snow. The terminal wasn't there! Dismay turned his bones to water, until he saw the terminal somewhat to his right. The wind had shifted to the northeast, and he'd continued to head into it.
His hands were bitter cold now, stiff and clumsy as he took hold of a fence post to climb over. He put his left foot on the second strand, next to the post, and began to raise himself. As he swung his right leg over, the strand that held his weight slipped downward, and he fell heavily against the top of the steel post. The pain was shocking, and he came apart with it, falling back against the top strand with the back of his right leg, then rolling off into the snow, tearing his outer trousers. Again he hugged his knees to him, rolling back and forth in pain and frustration, eyes closed, tears running down his grimy twisted cheeks.
He had to roll over onto his knees and use his arms to get up. His eyes, blurred with tears, searched through the snow squall at the half-obscured terminal. Then, trembling and whimpering, he approached the fence once more. This time he'd crawl through. His hands were too cold to clutch with, the fingers unresponsive now. He used them like sticks to push down on the strand of wire next to the top. Slowly, clumsily, he thrust his right leg between the wires and felt ground beneath the foot. Almost at once his outer shirt was caught. He tugged tentatively, but the barbs held. Any kind of angry lunge would have carried him through, freeing him, but suddenly he had nothing left. He simply crouched there, wretched in the blowing snow, clothing snagged on the small barbs. He had a foot on the ground on each side of the fence, and his freezing hands were hooked woodenly over the wire.
A thin keening noise came out of him, a sound of utter despair, while the wind and snow blew and the temperature dropped.