SULLIVAN did not remain brooding for long. After a few weeks, during which he had partaken only fitfully in the work on the Reserve, and was often absent, he sought out Rupert, looking some-what more cheerful than of late.

  “I’ve just learnt that I may get one of my deep water submarines back,” he announced. “Had a long legal battle, but I was finally able to convince the World Court that it was my own personal property and not that of the World Oceanographic Institute. No such luck with the Deep Sea Lab: I just hope that pipsqueak Jennings takes good care of it (he was once a student of mine—did you know?). So, any-way, I plan to go on another voyage of exploration. I’ll take Wilson, my colleague (he’s the one who pilots the sub—he met Rodricks and was ‘in the know’ all along). Care to come along, Rupert?”

  “Me? You’re joking, of course,” replied Rupert, hastily. “Thanks—but no thanks!—you know I’m far too claustrophobic—and there’s far too much work for me right here in the Reserve. Where are you going, anyway?”

  “Lake Kujuteldamatu.”

  “Lake Kuju—what did you call it?”

  “Lake Kujuteldamatu. Sorry, it is a bit of a mouthful! Word means ‘unimaginable’ in English.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would have. It’s a huge sub-glacial lake of fresh water deep down under the ice-cap in East Antarctica. Only recently been discovered. You’ve heard of Lake Vostok, of course—that one’s been known about for nearly two centuries. Well, this one’s even bigger. There may be all sorts of strange life-forms in there—completely cut off from the rest of the world’s biosphere. I intend to explore.”

  “In a submarine?” replied Rupert, incredulously. “How are you going to get it through all that ice? Through a borehole?”

  “A twelve-foot wide sub? Don’t be silly! Anyway, there aren’t any boreholes that have reached the lake yet. Very little is known about it. No—we’re going to fix a heating device to the front of the sub. Slowly melt our way through the ice—that’s the idea.”

  Ruth, who had joined them by this time, interceded.

  “Jack,” she said, alarmed. “you can’t really be contemplating such a mad endeavour? How long will it take? How will you do for air? And fuel? What if you get stuck? Don’t do it, for Heaven’s sake!”

  “What else is there for me to do?” retorted Sullivan, angrily. “What else is there for anyone to do, now that Homo sapiens is kaput? You tell me! Might as well fulfil my dreams. Please don’t even try to stop me. And we’ll be carrying enough oxygen and supplies for two months. That should be plenty. So stop bugging me.”

  So, despite all Ruth’s—and others’—attempts to dissuade him, Sullivan, accompanied by Wilson and three other crew members, set forth on the voyage a few weeks later. Boarding their submarine, currently berthed at Dunedin, they sailed south. Within a week or two they sent a message saying that they had successfully made landfall on Wilkes Land, and were making preparations to tunnel into the ice…

  And that was the last that was heard of them.

  Ruth, Rupert, and Ruby—along with those of Sullivan’s other friends who knew about the trip—waited anxiously. Two weeks passed. Then a month. Then another month. Then a third month…

  “He’s dead—I know he must be dead,” wailed Ruby. “And so soon after Hugh—and poor Anna too! We ought to have stopped him. We all knew he wouldn’t make it…” She lapsed into uncontrollable sobs.

  “Jack probably knew too that he wouldn’t make it,” remarked Rupert, casually. “It’s what’s happening all over the world now. People embarking on more and more madcap exploits, regardless of the danger. I suppose it’s their way of saying ‘goodbye’ to Earth, goodbye to humankind—now that we’re doomed.” Rupert had finally come to accept the state of affairs. “But I intend to stay alive as long as I can,” he continued. “I’ve got my animals to look after—and that’s a great comfort. And Ruth.” He purposefully didn’t even glance at Ruby.

  After a lot of persuasion, the World Antarctic Council finally agreed to launch a search for the missing explorers. After many days of scanning the ice cap, they finally located, by sonar, what appeared to be a submarine. It was trapped in the ice about six hundred kilometres inland, two hundred from Lake Kujuteldamatu, and about three thousand metres deep. Completely immobile, with no signs of life aboard. There were some indications that it had made it as far as the lake and was on its return journey. Despite pleas from Sullivan’s friends, Rupert especially, no attempt was made to drive a borehole down to the sub. Let the frozen chamber in the ice be the undisturbed tomb of the four men and one woman trapped there forever.

  Like—over two hundred and fifty years earlier—another team of five had perished on the Antarctic ice, on the return from another ill-fated expedition…

  But Rupert did not have leisure to mourn his friend’s loss for long. Trouble was erupting on his own doorstep.

  It soon emerged that the assistant ‘workers’ who had been lodged in his Reserve were not endowed with the conservationist ideology he had expected. They seemed to be regarding the area as a game reserve, set apart for hunting, rather than caring for the animals. One morning, just before dawn, Rupert was awakened by the sound of one of his all-terrain groundcars being moved. Alarmed, he hurriedly dressed and dashed outside, but the car had disappeared into the bush. He checked his lockup shed, and sure enough, the door had been forced and three shotguns and a small-bore rifle had been taken (Rupert was one of the few people on Earth still permitted to own firearms).

  In a panic, Rupert collected up a couple of dartguns and set out in his aircar. There was no knowing how far the ‘hunters’ had got: the groundcar was fully charged and would have had a range of nearly fifty kilometres, so they could be almost anywhere. But it had been driven without great skill, and the trail was easy to follow.

  Rupert soon came upon the first scene of carnage: a herd of male waterbuck—left lying where they had been shot. There was no sign of the hunters, and the animals were as yet unmutilated. Rupert wondered whether to wait, in case the hunters came back for the horns. But after sadly inspecting the animals, and assuring himself that they were quite dead, he decided to press on.

  Passing over areas of forest, he could see further signs of slaughter: several small monkeys and at least one chimpanzee lying dead under the trees. But he did not pause to examine the bodies, because he could sense a commotion, along with an ominous column of smoke, far ahead.

  The hunters appeared to have set fire to an area of scrubland and then attempted to shoot a fully-grown bull Bush Elephant. With the weapons they had, and what with the fire, the only effect would have been to frighten and enrage the beast, and it had charged at them. Once Rupert reached the spot, he could see that all four of the hunters were lying dead or injured, and the groundcar was wrecked. Rupert had to dart the animal several times and then hover for nearly half an hour, before the elephant was sufficiently subdued and he could safely land.

  Three of the hunters were already dead, and the fourth was badly injured. Rupert wasted no time trying to tackle the smouldering fire: he had no fire-fighting equipment with him apart from a small extinguisher, and anyway the fire did not seem to be spreading too rapidly—yet. Tending the wounded must come first. He hauled the wounded man into his aircar, administered what first aid he could, and then flew straight to the hospital in Kampala. To his relief, the doctors there told him that, with luck, the man would live: once he recovered sufficiently, Rupert would be anxious to interrogate him.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  When Rupert finally returned to his villa, he found Ruth anxiously awaiting him. She already knew what had happened: she had been told by some of the other workers. But Rupert’s first priority was to try to tackle the fire. He quickly started up his big firefighting truck, called to two of his workers—those he felt were most trustworthy—to accompany him, and set out to retrace the route he had followed earlier.

  When they at last reached the scene of the encounter with the bull elephant, they discovered to their surprise that the fire was completely put out. There was about a square kilometre of burnt-out savannah but the surrounding area was untouched. Rupert was puzzled. Why had the fire not spread? They inspected the ground but could not find any area still smouldering, and the soil and ashes were cold. The bodies of the hunters were still lying where they had fallen, but the wounded elephant was no longer to be seen: evidently it had come round and made off.

  Had the Overlords intervened? Rupert had not met an Overlord in months: he was wondering if they had abandoned humanity.

  That question could wait. The three collected the bodies and made their way back to the villa. Without further ado Rupert had the entire remaining group of fifteen migrants assembled in his living room, and confronted them furiously.

  “Three of your mates are dead—their bodies are in the fire truck and I’m expecting you lot to take them on and give them a decent burial—unless you want to leave them to the vultures, that is. Anyone else here fancy messing with the animals on the Reserve? If so, you’re out of here at the double—with the cops on your backs. Any questions, anyone?”

  The entire group were silent, shocked.

  Later on, when Rupert had calmed down sufficiently, Ruth told him that things like this were happening all over the world. And not just violence towards animals. Gangs of men (and even some women) armed with spiked clubs were staging pitched battles with rival gangs—fights to the death. Others had formed themselves into Russian Roulette clubs—where they got the revolvers from no-one knew—and would continue ‘playing’ until the gun went off—then re-load and play again. The Overlords were sometimes doing a bit to calm these situations, but were being largely ignored. They refused to use force on humanity. Perhaps they had decided that, once the human race realised it was doomed, it had better be left to seek its own routes to oblivion, however unpleasant or violent…

  Rupert’s problem with his unwelcome ‘visitors’ was resolved, at least. A few days after he reported the ‘hunters’ outrage, Rashaverak contacted him and told him that the Australian contingent would be removed from his Reserve and relocated elsewhere on Earth. It had been a mistake to lodge them there, Rashaverak admitted. So Rupert was left to manage the Reserve on his own, with just Ruth, Ruby and Leanne for company.

  Rupert was warming slightly towards Ruby, as time passed. He no longer cold-shouldered her and they were comfortable chatting together, along with Ruth. Leanne, too, was communicative again. The adults debated as to how, or even whether, her schooling should be resumed: after the great Evacuation most countries’ education systems were in abeyance—if not in utter chaos. Leanne was nearing her fifteenth birthday, and the World Education Council had announced that school was no longer compulsory for the remaining children on Earth—none of whom were under the age of eleven. Few children still went to school. What was the point, many people felt, when the world was doomed anyway? Some argued that humankind’s vast wealth of knowledge, both in Science and in the Humanities—much of which was not duplicated in the Overlords’ archives—ought not to lapse into oblivion. But what would happen when the last human on Earth died?

  Meanwhile, shielded from these depressing concerns, Leanne was happy helping ‘Uncle Rupert’ with the animals, displaying a gentle and sympathetic touch which Rupert was pleased with.

  In the end Ruth and Ruby concurred: Leanne must spend some time, at least, at a boarding-school. She had been enjoying her time at Rupert’s, but they all realised that she was missing the company of people her own age. Finding a suitable school was not that easy, but in the end Ruth and Ruby, searching together and with minimal help from Rupert, settled on a large and formerly exclusive co-educational school a few miles outside Moscow. It was a long way from central Africa but that couldn’t be helped. The online prospectus described it in glowing terms – a ‘wonderful’ setting surrounded by its own park; presumably not a park as well-stocked with wild animals as Rupert’s reserve, which was just as well. In its heyday, before the Overlords came, it had been one of the world’s most expensive schools. But money no longer held the power it once had.

  Ruby accordingly secured a place for Leanne, at least until her eighteenth birthday. Leanne reluctantly accepted the arrangement. So in a few weeks there were just three left in Rupert’s house.

  It was no respite for Rupert, however. His Australian migrants might be gone, but news of their dangerous exploit had spread far and wide. There were of course no longer any boys in the neighbouring villages as young as the one who had been killed by the buffalo, but there were plenty of young men willing to chance their lives in similar exploits. Every two or three days, it seemed, there was a break-in at the boundary fence—even the electrification did not stop them. With ten thousand square kilometres under his watch, Rupert could not survey every part at once. He pleaded with the Overlords to deploy their little levitating, spherical robots which had played such an important role at the time of first contact—but the Overlords replied that they had too few to spare—they were needed elsewhere on the planet.

  It was not until some time later that people came to realise that almost all the robots were deployed in Australia, to watch over the recently-settled Children as they underwent their slow amalgamation with the Overmind. It was evident that the Overlords were diverting most of their resources to caring for and studying the Children, rather than the remaining humans. Some argued, who could blame them? What more could be learnt from an ever more decadent and self-destructive version of ‘civilisation’?

  So the intruders gained a foothold in the Reserve, and the first of their exploits was to seek out the very same herd of buffalo that had killed the boy, years earlier. Having located them, they did their best, having torched part of the surrounding savannah, and with the help of a pack of half-trained but ferocious dogs, to drive several of them into a fenced compound outside the Reserve, where they were planning to set up a sort of rodeo-cum-bullfight combo.

  Several dogs were killed, and also four of the men—but in the end they managed to separate a few of the younger females that didn’t have calves, and bring them to the corral. Then the ‘sport’ began.

  By this time Rupert had learnt of the atrocity by means of his remote viewer, and he called the nearest outpost of Community Guardians (‘Police’ they would have been called in an earlier age—people still called them the ‘cops’). He pleaded with them to come and help him investigate the scene—it looked as if murder had been done—but they refused to commit themselves. They could spare no-one, they replied, and anyway murder was no longer considered a serious crime. There were too many of them, and the cops could not investigate all of them…

  So Rupert went to the scene alone. All the buffalo were dead, cruelly slain with spears and machetes. There were signs that some had been butchered—presumably for bushmeat, despite the fact that the eating of wild animal meat had been outlawed worldwide for over a century. There was no sign of the perpetrators who had fled long before he arrived—leaving two of their number dead.

  All that the Guardians had asked him to do was search each of the dead humans for his or her identity papers, and report the details back. Rupert sat on the ground and wept. When he had recovered himself somewhat, but still distraught, Rupert overcame his revulsion and complied with this unpleasant request. The cops weren’t bothered about the animals. They just didn’t care what had happened.

  Nobody cared any more. That was the pattern.

  This and similar events were bringing about a noticeable change in Rupert’s character. Far from exhibiting the shallow and na?ve person-ality of his earlier years, he was learning compassion—towards his fellow humans, that is, as well as his beloved animals. He was even showing tender thoughts towards Ruby—and Leanne—the days when he’d been treating them with scorn were long past.

  Would Ruby be looking to seek some sort of ‘way out’ like the would-be rodeo riders? worried Rupert. He was sure Ruth wouldn’t: she was too well-adjusted for that. Yet group suicide was becoming very much the norm in human behaviour. So many folk had lost everything that meant anything to them when they lost their Children. And Ruby had lost a Child.

  But Rupert still lacked the skill to reach out to her in her distress. If anyone were able to offer comfort, it would have to be Ruth.

  As for Rupert himself, he at least had no thoughts of taking himself out. As a confirmed materialist he planned to stay alive. Yes, he knew he was at heart ever a materialist, notwithstanding his manifest passion for books on the occult and spiritualism. Having no fund-amental beliefs in the soul or the afterlife, he intended to go on living—whatever the fate laid down for him—and whatever the fate of Mother Earth itself.