The Complete Short Stories

That evening he felt even more reluctant than usual to drive down into the town. Not only would Granger be in his private booth at the Neptune, dispensing the same mixture of humour and homily — he was virtually the only person Holliday could talk to, and inevitably he had come to resent his dependence on the older man — but Holliday would have his final interview with the migration officer and make the decision which would determine his entire future.

In a sense the decision had already been made, as Bullen, the migration officer, realized on his trip a month earlier. He did not bother to press Holliday, who had no special skills to offer, no qualities of character or leadership which would be of use on the new worlds. However, Bullen pointed out one small but relevant fact, which Holliday duly noted and thought over in the intervening month.

‘Remember, Holliday,’ he warned him at the end of the interview in the requisitioned office at the rear of the sheriff’s cabin, ‘the average age of the settlement is over sixty. In ten years’ time you and Granger may well be the only two left here, and if that lung of his goes you’ll be on your own.’

He paused to let this prospect sink in, then added quietly: ‘All the kids are leaving on the next trip — the Merryweathers’ two boys, Tom Juranda (that lout, good riddance, Holliday thought to himself, look out Mars) — do you realize you’ll literally be the only one here under the age of fifty?’

‘Katy Summers is staying,’ Holliday pointed out quickly, the sudden vision of a white organdy dress and long straw hair giving him courage.

The migration officer had glanced at his application list and nodded grudgingly. ‘Yes, but she’s just looking after her grandmother. As soon as the old girl dies Katy will be off like a flash. After all, there’s nothing to keep her here, is there?’

‘No,’ Holliday had agreed automatically.

There wasn’t now. For a long while he mistakenly believed there was. Katy was his own age, twenty-two, the only person, apart from Granger, who seemed to understand his determination to stay behind and keep watch over a forgotten Earth. But the grandmother died three days after the migration officer left, and the next day Katy had begun to pack. In some insane way Holliday had assumed that she would stay behind, and what worried him was that all his assumptions about himself might be based on equally false premises.

Climbing off the hammock, he went on to the terrace and looked out at the phosphorescent glitter of the trace minerals in the salt banks stretching away from the hotel. His quarters were in the penthouse suite on the tenth floor, the only heat-sealed unit in the building, but its steady settlement into the ocean bed had opened wide cracks in the load walls which would soon reach up to the roof. The ground floor had already disappeared. By the time the next floor went — six months at the outside — he would have been forced to leave the old pleasure resort and return to the town. Inevitably, that would mean sharing a chalet with Granger.

A mile away, an engine droned. Through the dusk Holliday saw the migration officer’s helicopter whirling along towards the hotel, the only local landmark, then veer off once Bullen identified the town and circle slowly towards the landing strip.

Eight o’clock, Holliday noted. His interview was at 8.30 the next morning. Bullen would rest the night with the Sheriff, carry out his other duties as graves commissioner and justice of the peace, and then set off after seeing Holliday on the next leg of his journey. For twelve hours Holliday was free, still able to make absolute decisions (or, more accurately, not to make them) but after that he would have committed himself. This was the migration officer’s last trip, his final circuit from the deserted cities near St Helena up through the Azores and Bermudas and on to the main Atlantic ferry site at the Canaries. Only two of the DEEP END 237 big launching platforms were still in navigable orbit — hundreds of others were continuously falling out of the sky — and once they came down Earth was, to all intents, abandoned. From then on the only people likely to be picked up would be a few military communications personnel.