Poul Anderson - In Memoriam

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In Memoriam

FICTION BY POUL ANDERSON

Against the inexorable forces of time, will humanity leave any lasting mark?

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, liar bones

The last man was likewise born in what had been a city, in his case Atlanta.

He fled it when 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 upon a time children had

heard their parents say, "Once upon a time," and related stories of a fabulous

age; but as life grew harder and people scarcer, such tales seemed gibberish

and were forgotten.

The girl became a woman before she really took sick-neither had ever been

healthy-and died. Her infrequent couplings with the man had had no issue. He

mourned in a mute fashion. Unsure what to do about the body, he finally

dragged it behind a fallen tree at a distance from the brush shelter in which

they had dwelt. Whenever he revisited the site, he would squat silent and

shyly stroke her skull. In time, boggy ground and thorny overgrowth hid the

skeleton, but he continued to eat the grubs he picked out of that log with a

certain reverence.

Otherwise he lived dumb. His name and most else dropped out of memory. Gaunt,

rachitic, rotten-toothed, plagued by recurrent fevers and jaw clattering

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Poul Anderson - In Memoriam

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