“WHAT’S happening to the world? There’s terrible news I’m afraid. It’s about Jean and George! Look at this, Rupert,” said Ruth, tossing her tablet towards Rupert. He muffed the catch and the tablet landed on his projector console, nudging one of the controls as it did so. As a result, the hologram projection of Rupert’s body veered away from the white rhinoceros that it was stealthily approaching. The rhino, noticing the sudden movement, lifted its head and snorted, but did not bolt—to Rupert’s relief—instead it resumed browsing the vegetation. Rupert was almost sure that this rhino—a female—was pregnant: if so, it would be the first successful mating of rhinos in the reserve for over a year. Rupert was anxious to get a closer look.

With a sigh he adjusted the projection so that his image was once again facing the animal—then he cast his eyes over the tablet which was displaying a banner news headline.

“What? ‘New Athens’. Yes!—that’s that middle-of-nowhere island where George and Jean live now, isn’t it. The whole place?”

“ ‘Lived’, past tense, not ‘live’, I’m afraid,” replied Ruth. She took the tablet and resumed reading. After a minute she paused to explain. “Yes. It was supposed to be a secret, known only to the islanders—and they were given an opportunity to leave—but most remained. I don’t suppose a secret like that would be easy to keep from the rest of the world! But the date was kept a secret. Now it’s happened. Thermonuclear bombs planted in boreholes all across the island, all set off at once. One whopper of a mushroom cloud. Then—nothing left: not even a brick wall standing … And Jean’s and George’s names aren’t among the list of evacuees. They must have stayed…”

Rupert was silent for a while. He’d abandoned his scrutiny of the pregnant rhino and switched off his projector. The implication of this piece of news was only just sinking in. Jean had been one of his close friends for years—before she had met George, even. He’d even tried to make out with her—before Ruby, that was—but she’d gently but firmly resisted his advances. They had remained good friends all the same. Could she really be dead—and George, too?

“We must go there and find their bodies,” he muttered. “Give them a decent burial, at least…”

“Rupert, dear, don’t you understand? No-one can go to the island. There’s a hundred-kilometre exclusion zone around it—radioactive fallout—although I bet some folks will have flouted it anyhow: their nemesis—as they’ll discover when their hair and teeth start falling out. There’ll be no human remains on the island. Nothing living at all. Just ashes… and radioactive dust. Like what happened on the Maldives. And Saint Helena. And Samoa. Didn’t you hear about those? So far, it’s been only islands. But it won’t be long before the suicide streak hits the mainlands. Africa even. Surely you care about that?”

Rupert shook his head—then changed his mind and nodded briefly. “Sorry, I’ve been sort of shutting myself off from all the news these last few weeks. It’s all so unbelievable: I just want to focus on the animals. They don’t have any worries…”

Ruth—not for the first time—rounded on Rupert angrily. “Just like you, Rupert. Don’t give a damn about what’s happening in the world outside your precious Reserve, do you? Whole communities taking themselves out—just like that. People out there, not wanting to be part of Earth any more. Well, I’m warning you, Rupert. Your animals might be next—”

“I don’t know … am I meant to be taking you seriously, my dear Ruth?” retorted Rupert, peevish in his turn. “What’s happening in the outside world … yes it’s like, sort of, group suicides. Of humans. It’s happened before in history.”

Ruth remained silent for a while, not wanting to embark on a full-blown quarrel. Finally she replied, calmly, “OK. Jonestown. Masada. Clifford’s Tower. But never so much as is happening now. What we’re seeing is despair at the coming extinction of the human race. Trust me—it’s happening.”

“All right. But not with animals,” said Rupert. “They’re non-sapient. They understand fear, but they don’t really have a concept of death. They might sacrifice their own life through blind instinct—like when a bee stings someone—but they can’t knowingly take their own lives. You don’t believe all that ‘lemming’ nonsense, surely?”

“Of course not,” replied Ruth. “OK—I’m not suggesting that all your animals will deliberately gobble up heaps of hemlock stems … or machineel … or jimsonweed … whatever the equivalent is that grows around these parts. But there’s other trouble going on out there—not just the suicides. It might spill over.”

Rupert shrugged. Of course, even he knew something about the decadence and depravity that were gradually engulfing the world at large. His perceived indifference was partly an act. But there was an element of denialism in it…

It was only a few weeks later that news came from Australia of another tragedy: close to home, in a sense. A plaintive e-mail arrived from Rupert’s ex-wife Ruby: unsurprisingly, sent not to Rupert but to Ruth who was an old friend. The first they had heard from her for years. Ruby had become a widow. She told the full story. She and Hugh had had a second child together—another girl—but she had been taken by the Change and was lost to them. They were desolate: even the teenage Leanne, who remained to them, was not enough of a consolation. Hugh, in an attempt to assuage his grief, had resumed his old hobby of daredevil motorcycling—something he hadn’t indulged in for years. Ruby was dismayed but powerless to stop him. Many dangerous stunts and near-death episodes later, he’d resolved to try and bike it over Uluru—disregarding the total prohibition of access to the rock that had been in force for well over a century.

He hadn’t got very far. Airborne patrols had spotted him and order­ed him by loudhailer to turn back. After repeated warnings which Hugh ignored, they fired a warning shot. Startled, Hugh slipped a wheel into a crevice, lost his balance, and went sprawling. He didn’t at first seem badly hurt, but the patrols picked him up anyway and flew him to hospital at Alice Springs. There, he went into shock and suffered a brain haemorrhage. He was dead before Ruby reached him.

Why, oh why? Ruby had pleaded in her distraught message to Ruth. It wasn’t just Hugh. People all over the country—men, mostly—were embarking on ever more dangerous exploits, with a devil-may-care attitude. Perhaps it was that they wanted to depart the world in spec­tacular fashion: they had lost their kids, the human race was at its final generation—so everything was lost and they may as well die… Perhaps Hugh had planned an elaborate suicide: perhaps he had wanted the patrols to shoot him.

Well, his wish was granted, in a sense…

Ruby’s elder daughter, Leanne, who was convinced that Hugh had been her true father, was of course utterly distraught. She had retreat­ed into a shell, talking to no-one, not even crying: just utterly unres­ponsive. It was almost as bad as losing their younger daughter. “Please, Ruth,” Ruby concluded, “could you come over for a while? Rupert can spare you for a bit, surely? I could really really do with your company.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

It took a lot of work for Ruth to persuade Rupert to let her go, but in the end she was able to board her aircar and programme a course for Ruby’s house, just south of Cairns. She found Ruby much cheered upon her arrival—they were after all old friends—and as partners in early widowhood they hoped they would find much solace in each other’s companionship. But Ruth made no progress at all with Leanne, whom she had met only on the odd occasion up till then. Leanne remained stubbornly locked away from all human contact. Still—maybe time would tell.

But only a few days after Ruth’s arrival in Australia, there came the most sensational bombshell of all.

Australia was to be evacuated.

Every human soul remaining on the continent would have to move to another part of the world. The message came from the Overlords, but it was not attributed to Karellen himself: any one of his team could have delivered it. This was of no consequence. Not only the people of Australia, but the entire world, were numb with shock.

Karellen must have realised that without some sort of explanation, riots would erupt which even the Overlords, for all their power, would not be able to contain. So a few hours later a further message was issued. This edict originated, not with the Overlords, they explained, but with their superiors, the so-called ‘Overmind’. The Children who had undergone the Change—all three hundred million of them!—were currently being accommodated on the Overlords’ vast spaceships, in orbit round the planet. Ruth knew about that—and so did Rupert: they had watched, horrified, as one of the ships settled on the ground near the cluster of villages just north of Rupert’s animal reserve, and gathered up all the affected Children, their sobbing parents bewailing their loss. Were all the affected Children worldwide being crammed into these ships, they had wondered? The huge volume of an Overlord spaceship notwithstanding, the kids would have to be packed together more tightly even than the victims of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century slave trade, crammed into the holds of ships and scarcely able to breathe. Surely the Children would suffocate, starve, and die of heat exhaustion!

Karellen had been obliged to reassure Earth on that point. The Children were no longer conscious of their physical surroundings, so they did not suffer psychologically. And they were being provided with adequate oxygen and nourishment, and their ambient temper­ature was carefully controlled.

But even so, this arrangement was only temporary, and the Over­mind had directed that a sufficiently large, isolated landmass be cleared of human inhabitants and allocated to the Children. After discussing the matter with Rashaverak and several other Overlords, Karellen came to the conclusion that only Australia would fit the requirements. Hence the evacuation order.

A century earlier, virtually every other country in the world would have utterly refused to take any of the evacuees, and the ensuing mayhem would almost certainly have led to world war. But this was the twenty-second century, not the twenty-first, and humanity was far more benign and tolerant that it had been. Moreover, Earth’s popula­tion had diminished, from its peak of over ten billion in the first half of the twenty-first century, to just over four billion. There was room to accommodate the approximately fifteen million Australians who would need to be relocated. Every country—every local district—took its share.

Ruth, along with Ruby and Leanne and all their belongings, arrived on Rupert’s doorstep a few days later. Rupert was none too pleased at meeting his ex-wife again: he would have much rather it had been Maia—but she was well settled in Glasgow with her new partner and there was no chance of her returning. Nevertheless he formally wel­comed Ruby and Leanne (whom he had never met) and agreed that they could share a spare bedroom in the house. He had room enough.

Ruby helped with looking after the house, and spent much time chatting with Ruth. There was a sort of easy acceptance of each other’s presence which helped in the healing process.

“Ruth,” said Ruby one afternoon, as they were relaxing in Ruth’s bedroom while Rupert was working at his projector, “there’s some­thing I haven’t told anyone. Not Leanne, not even Hugh—though he might have guessed. I’m wondering if I should tell you…”

Ruth made a shrewd guess. “It’s about Leanne, isn’t it?”

“You’re right.” Ruby hesitated for a while. “Rupert is Leanne’s father. Not Hugh. I’m sure of it: the timings work out. I haven’t dared tell her. All her life she’s thought of Hugh as ‘Daddy’. And until now she didn’t even know about Rupert. I think I should keep it from her still—should I?”

Ruth pondered this for a long time. “I don’t think you should tell her—not now,” she finally declared, decisively. “And don’t ever tell Rupert, either. You’re right: this must be a secret between you and me only. Leanne is grieving over her lost father—so soon after her lost little sister too—but she’ll come out of it in her own time. A sudden revelation that Hugh wasn’t her father at all would break her utterly. And Rupert wouldn’t take it well, either. He’d be a poor father in any case: too full of himself, as you well remember. Better let him be cast as a benevolent uncle…”

“You’re right,” replied Ruby. “But I had to tell someone. Thank you so much for hearing me out.”

So Rupert remained in total ignorance of the fact that he had a daughter. He accepted his guests as ‘boarders’ and was civil to them when they met—that was all. And he soon had other worries.

He had at first been dismayed at being allocated twenty Australian refugees to share his wild animal reserve with him—but once it was explained that all the newcomers had some experience at working with animals, he grudgingly accepted them. Builders were brought in to construct a row of cottages on scrubland behind Rupert’s spacious mansion: everyone would live close together, and the wildlife would be disturbed as little as possible. With ten thousand square kilometres at his disposal, Rupert could spare the land. And he was secretly cheered at being relieved of some of his workload.

Among the new intake was Rupert’s old friend Jack Sullivan, some­time Professor of Marine Biology, and now a world celebrity for all the wrong reasons.

Sullivan it was who had connived at Jan Rodricks’ escape from Earth—escape from the Solar System—stowed away on an Over­lords’ ship bound for their home planet. Sullivan it was who had provided the sperm whale—or rather, as it later emerged, the mock-up of a sperm whale carcass—in which Jan had concealed himself. Sullivan had hoped to keep his part in the venture a close secret until his dying day—but such was not to be his fate. Within a relatively short time—soon after Karellen had revealed Jan’s escapade to the Press—the secret had leaked out. Sullivan—while becoming the darling of the popular Press—was at once blackballed by virtually the whole of academia. His World Government grant was suspended, preventing him from continuing his research—and he was left stranded, so to speak, on terra firma. He had been kicking his heels in Sydney until the great Evacuation forced him to leave.

Sullivan was not a happy man. He had lost his wife Anna a few years before: she had deliberately plunged to her death from the historic Sydney Harbour Bridge—for what reason, nobody knew. He was quite alone, and missed her dreadfully. Moreover, he had spent a large part of his fortune in legal battles, in an attempt to retain his underwater habitat—but in the end it had been confiscated: allocated to a colleague. Being set to tending antelopes and wildebeest was a sad comedown for the man accustomed to encounters with giant squid and manta rays.

If only he had refused to assist Jan in his madcap venture!

And now, with humans on Earth facing obliteration, what were his thoughts? Rupert, of course, was oblivious to Sullivan’s anxiety, but Ruth could sense his unease. So could Ruby.

What effect would the news of the self-destruction of New Athens and the other island communities have upon him?