THE flight was not a long one, to Jacqui’s relief, because the ride in the cramped autogyro cockpit was far from comfortable, and the noise made it almost impossible to speak. After about an hour she could see that they were above a fairly large town built on either side of a river estuary on the peninsula’s west coast. The aircraft was now descending and Jacqui guessed that this was their destination.

“It’s actually two towns side-by-side,” Nathan shouted in her ear. “The northern one’s named Puerto O’Higgins, and the southern one Grahamsport. But I’ll explain more when we’re down.”

Strange name, the first of those, Jacqui thought—and clearly signs of some Hispanic influence here! But she said nothing while the aircraft touched down and came to rest on a gravel strip on the southern town’s outskirts, similar to the one they’d taken off from. Nathan and Adam guided Jacqui to what appeared to be a waiting taxi (electric, Jacqui noted)—and within a few minutes they were outside an attractive chalet-type house faced with wooden boards and surrounded by an American-style porch.

“Do the two of you share this house?” Jacqui enquired, innocently.

“We—and others,” replied Nathan. “But you’ll see.” Even as he spoke, an attractive woman appeared out of the house. She was in her mid thirties, slim, with long hair falling in golden curls about her face, and accompanied by two young girls. All three were dressed in the same rather drab overalls as Nathan and Adam were wearing.

“Mother, may I introduce my wife, Emily?” continued Nathan. “Emily, this is my mother, Jacqui. And these are our daughters: June, who’s nearly twelve years old, and Helen, who’s just turned nine. And Adam shares the house with us, staying in a spare bedroom. At least, that was the arrangement while we were waiting for you. But I’m sure you have many more questions, mother. I’ll try to answer them.”

They went indoors and sat around the table in a spacious kitchen, where Emily brought out a cake and cups of tea—no!—not tea, some sort of herbal infusion, but it was as refreshing as a cup of tea would have been. The first tea Jacqui had tasted for years—and a slice of cake! She sniffed the milk enquiringly. “Goat’s milk,” explained Emily. “We don’t raise cattle here, but there are sheep and goats reared up in the hills.”

*

Jacqui felt she ought to break the ice. “First of all, how old are you now, Nathan? Physically, at any rate. Because you’re clearly nowhere near one hundred and thirty!”

Nathan laughed. “I’m thirty-eight, Mother. Thirty-eight years actually lived that is. And Adam’s seventy-five.”

“Wow! You’re older than me, Nathan! You can’t keep on calling me ‘mother’. Please call me ‘Jacqui’ or ‘Jacqueline’ from now on.”

“All right, Jacqui. Yes, it is strange and rather paradoxical—but now that we have the suspended-animation device—the ‘Hibernat’ as it’s been named—such weird situations do arise from time to time. But I’d better tell our story from where Adam left off.

“Well, by the time NASA had fully tested the equipment, Emily and I were married and had these two—” pointing at the girls “—and Adam was in his seventies. Nevertheless all five of us were willing to go into the Hibernat to await your return—even the children! They were thrilled when we explained that they might be going to meet their long-lost grandma. There were no other volunteers, so it was just us five.

“We’d sought out advice from the climatologists, and they were of the opinion that the most habitable parts of Earth in a century’s time would likely be here on the Antarctic peninsula, and Novaya Zemlya in the high Arctic. We chose here, guessing (correctly) that this was where your spaceship was most likely to set you down. At the time the peninsula was uninhabited except by a few scientific research stations. So we and the Hibernat capsules were all flown to one of the stations—run by Argentina, as it happens, and lodged in a sort of vault built into a cavern. The Hibernats were to be powered by electricity from a radioisotope source in an adjacent, sealed cavern. Like what they used to power the Voyager spacecraft—using plutonium. Dangerous stuff—but our capsules were kept well away from it. They were programmed to release us after eighty-eight years—that being the time we’d calculated until your return, if you started for home at once. We were given special metallic clothing, because we were warned that ordinary textiles would perish in the capsules.”

“I know,” put in Jacqui. “Hence this poncho I’m wearing.”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

Both Adam and Nathan laughed at that. “Yes—not too comfortable they were,” continued Nathan. “But we hoped that upon waking we’d find some sort of civilisation here, and would be able to get proper clothing. So we went into our capsules, the vault was sealed, and we dropped off to sleep.

“When we ‘woke’, we found we were in luck. Clear instructions had been kept at the Argentinian station, and once the climate became warm enough, people began to arrive and settle here and the instructions were passed on. So we found these two thriving communities already waiting for us, and they were expecting us: they’d already opened the vault and were welcoming us.

“I meant to explain the names, by the way. Grahamsport, where we are, is mostly English-speaking inhabitants. ‘Graham Land’ was the original name given to the peninsula by early British explorers. The other, larger town, Puerto O’Higgins, is mostly populated by Spanish-speakers. It was given that name by Chilean settlers, because ‘O’Higgins Land’ was their name for the peninsula. And the whole peninsula is called SanMartinland at the Argentinians’ insistence—for a similar reason.”

“I’ve heard the name O’Higgins,” put in Jacqui. “Wasn’t he some sort of national hero for Chile—their Founding Father, like George Washington—but originally from Ireland? Hence the Irish name?”

“Yes: Bernardo O’Higgins—early nineteenth century. It was his father who emigrated from Ireland. If you venture into Puerto O’Higgins and speak to the people there, you’ll be sure to learn all his life history, in spades!

“But to continue. We came out of the Hibernat with no ill effects, and were welcomed into the community. That was about two years ago. As you can see, this place is limited in numbers but thriving and self-supporting. We are growing crops and raising livestock—but not cattle! They have been banned worldwide. There is some small industry here—mostly on the O’Higgins side—textiles, machinery, and suchlike, are being manufactured, as you have seen. Also we have power stations—mostly wind turbines and solar power. Both Emily and I found ourselves jobs here, and the girls go to the local school. We were able to buy this house, as you can see, and Adam is staying with us for now.”

This reminded Jacqui of something. “So the children are home from school now—or is it the school holidays?” She glanced out of the window at the sunlit garden. “I’ve been on Earth for hours—why isn’t it getting dark yet?” After enduring the Sous’ forty-six-day Day-Night cycle for so long, she was yearning for a day-night rhythm to coincide with her sleeping pattern.

“You’ve been forgetting your geography, perhaps, Jacqui,” said Emily. “We’re south of the Antarctic Circle here, and it happens to be mid-December: the Antarctic summer. In fact you’ve arrived just in time for Christmas, you’ll be pleased to know! So it’s 24-hour daytime at present: the ‘midnight sun’. You’ll get used to it. And it’ll be fun when we get to midwinter and the sun doesn’t rise at all—although it never gets completely dark. And it’ll be no colder than a typical British winter—before Climate Change messed everything up. There may be some snow, but it won’t be freezing all the time.”

Climate Change! Planet Earth had indeed been all but laid waste—just as the scientists had feared. Perhaps this was the only habitable part—as Jacqui had already guessed from her view from the space­ship. “Are there other communities elsewhere on the peninsula?” she asked.

“None as large as these towns: mostly small villages and farming communities. Some are centred around the original research stations that were here before SanMartinland became habitable—although they no longer function as research stations.”

“And what about elsewhere on the planet?” Jacqui guessed that she might not like the answer.

“There are communities on Novaya Zemlya,” replied Nathan. “We keep in touch with them by satellite radio. Most of the people there are Russian-speakers. Luckily for them, it’s been almost two centuries since the Soviet nuclear tests, so almost all the radiation from the fallout has dissipated. It’s warmer there than it is here: they grow crops like maize, bananas, and coconut.”

“Tea?” asked Jacqui, taking a last sip from her infusion which was now getting cold.

“Yes there is tea, but it’s very expensive. We enjoy this local stuff just as much.”

“So—the rest of the Earth?”

“Pretty much dead, as you’ve seen,” said Nathan. “The human population worldwide now numbers less than three million—about the population of Manchester in your time. And so many animals and plants have gone extinct—such a tragedy! But people are saying, Earth will recover. There are still communities in southern Chile and Argentina. The global temperature has stopped rising in the past twenty years. Of course, human carbon emissions are now only a fraction of what they were a century and more ago. Some people are wondering, should we bring back cattle as livestock? There are a few specimens still living in a zoo somewhere in SanMartinland.”

On that upbeat note, it was decided to adjourn further discussion until after the evening meal. Jacqui was wondering what twenty-second century food would be like—surely an improvement on the Sous’ weird commissariat, at the very least! When it came to the table, she noticed that all the dishes were vegetarian, and delicious. Had Adam remembered that she was a vegetarian, perhaps? But when she enquired, Emily explained that most people were veget­arian nowadays. A not unexpected development in human eating habits! Jacqui tucked into her first ‘proper’ meal for two years with relish.