Evolution

Sidewise rubbed his nose. "Hard to say. If we had an astronomy almanac I guess we could figure it out from the changed positions of the stars. Failing that, your best guess is based on the maturity of the oak forest."

Bonner snapped, "You’re so full of shit, you scrawny bastard. How fucking long? Fifty years, sixty—"

"Not less than a thousand years," Sidewise said, his voice tight. "Maybe more. Probably more, actually."

In silence, they let that sink in. And Snowy closed his eyes, imagining he was plunging off the deck of an aircraft carrier into the dark.

A thousand years. And yet it meant no more than the fifty-year gulf that he thought had separated him from his wife. Less, maybe, because it was just unimaginable.

"Some future this is," Bonner said edgily. "No jet cars. No starships, no cities on the Moon. Just shit."

Ahmed said, "We have to assume we are not going to find anybody else. That we’re alone. We have to plan on that basis."

Sidewise snorted. "Civilization has collapsed, everybody is dead, and we’re stuck a thousand years in the future. How are we supposed to plan for that?"

"That river is probably clean," Snowy said. "All the factories must have shut down centuries ago."

Ahmed nodded gratefully at him. "Good. At last, something we can actually build on. We can fish, we can hunt; we can start that tomorrow. Sidewise, why don’t you use that brain of yours for something useful and think about the fishing? Figure out how we can improvise lines, nets, whatever the hell. Snowy, you do the same for the hunting. Further down the line, we’re going to have to find somewhere to live. Maybe we can find a farm. Start thinking about clearing the ground, planting wheat." He glanced at the sky. "What do you think the season is? Early summer? We’re too late for a harvest this year. But next spring—"

Sidewise snapped, "Where do you think you’re going to find wheat? Do you know what happens if you leave corn or wheat unharvested? The ears fall to the ground and rot. Cultivated wheat needed us to survive. And if you leave cows unmilked for a few days, they just die of udder bursts."

"Take it easy," Snowy said.

"All I’m telling you is that if you want to farm, you’ll have to start from scratch. The whole damn thing, agriculture and husbandry, all over again from wild stock, plants and animals."

Ahmed nodded stiffly. "We, Side. Not you. We. We all share the problems here. All right. So that’s what we’ll do. And in the meantime we gather, we hunt. We live off the land. It’s been done before."

Moon fingered her clothing. "This stuff won’t last forever. We’ll have to find out how to make cloth. And our weapons will be pretty useless once the ammo is gone."

Bonner said, "Maybe we can make more ammo."

Sidewise just laughed. "Think about stone axes, pal."

Bonner growled, "I don’t know how to make a fucking stone ax."

"Neither do I, come to think of it," Sidewise said thoughtfully. "And you know what? I bet there aren’t even any books to tell us how. All that wisdom, painfully acquired since we were buck naked Homo erectus running around in Africa. All gone."

"Then we’ll just have to start that again too," Ahmed said firmly.

Bonner eyed him. "Why?"

Ahmed looked up at the sky. "We owe it to our children."

Sidewise said simply, "Four Adams and one Eve."

There was a long, intense silence. Moon was like a statue, her eyes hard. Snowy noticed how close her hand was to her PPK.

Ahmed got to his feet. "Don’t think about the future. Think about filling your belly." He clapped his hands. "Let’s move it."

They dispersed. The crescent moon was already rising, a bonelike sliver in the blue sky.

"So," Sidewise said to Snowy as they moved off, "how are you finding life in the future?"

"Like doing time, mate," Snowy said bitterly. "Like doing fucking time."

III

Maybe five kilometers from the base camp, Snowy was trying to build a fire.

He was in what must once have been a field. There were still traces of a dry stone wall that marked out a broad rectangle. But after a thousand years it was pretty much like any patch of land hereabouts, choked by perennial herbs and grasses, shrubs and deciduous seedlings.