The Human Son Read online

  PRAISE FOR ADRIAN J WALKER

  THE END OF THE WORLD RUNNING CLUB

  “A real find”—Stephen King

  “Extraordinary”—Simon Mayo Radio 2 Book Club

  “Adrian Walker breaks your heart in unexpected ways, and leaves you with a sense of stories still to be told. An end-of-the-world tale that is anything but an ending”—Anne Corlett, author of The Space Between the Stars

  “A fresh and frighteningly real take on what ‘the end’ might be… quite an exciting and nerve-wracking ‘run’, with characters you believe in and feel for”—New York Times bestselling author Robert McCammon

  “Harrowing and heartrending, this is a novel that is almost impossible to put down”—Library Journal, Starred Review

  “Ridiculously gripping straight from the start”—Jenny Colgan

  “Will thrill and delight… a terrifically well-observed, haunting and occasionally harrowing read”—Starburst

  “This is an uplifting, exciting and often humorous yarn about camaraderie, endurance and redemption. Throughout, Walker nicely evokes the agony and exhilaration of distance running” —The Times

  “Compulsively readable”—SFX

  “…what sets this novel apart is Walker’s extraordinary emotional articulacy”—The Sun

  “A page-turning thriller with a pace as relentless as the characters’ feet hitting the pavement. A deft look into the mind of a man who needs the near-destruction of the world to show him what truly matters”—Laura Lam, author of False Hearts

  “Brilliant… superb to the end”—Lucy Mangan

  “A really fun, engaging, exciting, and compassionate take on a familiar scenario: the apocalypse… Highly recommended”—David Owen, Carnegie-longlisted author of Panther

  THE LAST DOG ON EARTH

  “[Walker] delivers another postapocalyptic tale with a strong hook… deftly using the alternating dog and man narrations to generate tension”—Booklist

  “Fans of both dog tales and postapocalyptic fiction will flock to this latest from Walker. Lineker’s vulgar matter-of-factness lends the perfect tone to this near future when politics has led folks further astray”—Library Journal

  “Very few dystopian novels push through to the horrors explored here. Fewer still reach these heights of lyricism, humour and decency”—Jamie Buxton, Daily Mail

  THE END OF THE WORLD SURVIVOR’S CLUB

  “Genuinely unputdownable, this is a book that sinks its claws into your imagination and your sense of adventure and won’t let go until the final page. Massively enjoyable”—Starburst

  Published 2020 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-300-2

  Copyright © 2020 Adrian Tchaikovsky

  Cover art by Sam Gretton

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names. characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  For my son, Joe, with endless love and pride.

  BIRTH

  — ONE —

  YOU AND I were born with a purpose.

  Mine was to save the world.

  Yours was to remind us why it needed saving in the first place.

  Your rebirth was a loud and visceral affair, quite at odds with the tranquillity of your extinction. When the last human died—a lady named Hanna from a place they called Sweden—there was a day of peace during which we sat upon hilltops and in forests and by the sea, and nothing ran but rivers. Three hundred of us encircled the corpse in Stockholm. We laid her out in the appropriate way, dressing her in a simple frock with her hands folded over her midriff and her white hair combed and neat.

  The Earth turned through day and night. Snow fell, and for the first time in a thousand years the planet was permitted to rest.

  But when you emerged from the fluid in the Halls of Gestation that long rest was shattered. You spluttered as your lungs filled with air, a look of terror wrinkled your face, and then you screamed. It was a sound like no other I have heard.

  I have been a custodian of this planet for five hundred years. I have seen every type of animal give birth, from the gloop of a lamb onto straw to the squirming of grubs to the craning of an eagle chick’s neck as it breaks through its shell. And I have seen death too. I have witnessed leopards spring, claws slash, fangs tear, owls swoop, a doe’s flesh removed from her back as her face turns to the winter sky and her blood stains the snow. I have seen all the wonders and horrors of evolution and guarded them well, but I have never heard a scream like yours.

  That wail. Full of fear, full of darkness, full of woe. As if existence was pain. To hear it was to hear a being that had been given life in the last place it would choose to live it.

  Perhaps, on some level, that had always been true.

  I pulled you from the amniotic sack and held your wriggling, pinched body up in the glare of the laboratory lights. Your head slumped forward, your limbs flailed, your eyes rolled. You were useless. Blind, weak and utterly at the mercy of the world.

  If it had not been for my sister, Haralia, I would have assumed the birth had gone wrong. Perhaps, I would have thought, I had miscalculated your genetic coding—a highly improbable scenario, of course, but one in which my only course of action would have been to place you on the table and terminate you.

  I did not, however. Because of what Haralia had said.

  Some months before she had warned me: ‘They scream, you know. Humans. When they’re born.’

  Haralia’s expertise is in animal husbandry whereas mine is in atmospheric chemistry, so she knows more about these things than me.

  ‘Every human birth was so,’ she went on, brightly, for my sister is a joyful being. ‘A helpless remonstration against itself. A struggle without the strength to succeed.’

  So I did not kill you. Instead I marked my chart.

  My own birth was not like this at all. I remember it very well. The first face I saw upon opening my eyes was Dr Nyström’s laboratory technician, a nervous, undernourished man named David who wore broken spectacles. In those first seconds my mind was filled with light and knowledge. I could already feel the world being absorbed and processed by my nervous system. There was no fear and no question of what I was, or why I was here. I was a being of peace and reason and nothing would sway me from my purpose.

  The man named David blinked, frowned and muttered things to himself. I already knew more about him in those first few moments of my life than he had ever been able to know in his own. As I stood up, the fluid from my birthing tank ran down my body, and every trickle’s calculation sped through my brain. At once I knew the trajectory of every rivulet down my neck, bosom, and spine, across my buttocks and legs.

  Dr Nyström made us in your image, only somewhat taller and leaner, with finer features. In her eyes, we were perfect examples of your species.

  In fact we were nothing of the sort.

  David staggered back, smiled, and said hello. I gave him the greeting he desired and stepped out of the tank. I towered above him. He offered me a towel, which I watched for five seconds, absorbed in the difference between its crude weave and the coloured shells of the tiny creatures that wandered through it, as if through a forest.

&n
bsp; Now supremely excited, David dropped the towel and held up a mirror. I looked away from it. I already knew the dimensions of my face and the pigment of my skin—a mild ashen cream with freckles on high cheekbones. My eyes are a deep green, like all female erta.

  No, I was not at all interested in absorbing bouncing photons from polished glass. I was altogether more interested in the nine others like me, my siblings, who had also stepped from their tanks. Beyond us stood our mother, Kai, a member of the High Council. She watched us with interest, and we watched her back. Already, we knew our purpose.

  Our births could not have been more different.

  Your cry was now in full force. Having accepted Haralia’s advice that there was nothing unusual in this, I made the necessary checks. Orifices, eyes, fingers, toes. Confirming that you did indeed have the requisite number of each, I cleaned you and swaddled you in a blanket. Then I left the Halls of Gestation, carrying you in my arms.

  You were born early one Spring morning within a mountain, where the Halls had been built five centuries before, overlooking the forest city of Ertanea and the sea beyond.

  The sun was yet to rise and the pines stretched out beneath a veil of perfect white moonlight. There was a frost in the air so I tightened your blanket and pulled over my hood as I followed the wide steps down. Our galaxy arced above us. I spotted Jupiter close to the moon and a distant constellation I had not seen for some months. I made a note to examine it later, when I had more time.

  I found Boron slumbering by the stone wall at the bottom of the steps and awoke him with a nudge of his nuzzle. Then, holding you in the crook of my arm, I climbed upon his back and let him carry us home.

  It was dawn when we emerged from the forest and long shadows drew out across the brightening meadows. You had found peace beneath the canopies, but when the sunlight hit your face your eyes opened, rolling around. You began to cry again, and this time you had no intention of stopping.

  The noise unnerved Boron, who snorted steam and scuffed his hooves, but I managed to settle him and we trotted on down the track.

  When we arrived at my settlement, Fane, your cry had become a repetitive pulse. You knew nothing else, apparently. This was all you could do.

  I released Boron into the paddock and walked across the stone square. Some of my fellow villagers were already awake and peering through their windows, no doubt wondering what the disturbance was. Jakob was at the well, filling his pail.

  ‘All is well, Ima?’ he said, spotting the bundle in my arm. ‘A success?’

  I nodded back.

  ‘All is well,’ I said.

  He watched me as I entered my dwelling, pail half full.

  Inside I laid you on the bed and took the corner chair. Your screams filled my house, echoing from the timber and rattling the walls. I was tired, and for the first time I pondered the notion that this may have been a mistake.

  — TWO —

  202 DAYS BEFORE, I had been standing in the cool, stone chambers of the Halls of Reason, where the High Council met. One hundred of us formed a circle around our elders. These ten were our parents, the second generation of erta, born of Oonagh.

  I have never met Oonagh. Few have. She was the first of our kind and now lives on her own in the mountains, for reasons I neither know nor need to know.

  Kai, my mother, spoke.

  ‘Friends and children. Our purpose has been fulfilled.’

  Her voice echoed from the high stone walls, into which the roots and branches of trees had been allowed to grow. The tongue click of the final ‘d’ hissed into silence, riding the sonorous vowels of its preceding word before a collection of dirt in the rafters dampened the final decibels of its reverberation. My five centuries spent stabilising this planet’s atmosphere have bred a fascination with the air and how things move through it. Sound is no exception, and I find speech of particular interest.

  My mother continued.

  ‘The sea levels have been restored, the coastlines are clean, the forests are full. The atmosphere—’ she glanced in my direction, with a mother’s smile ‘—is clear and perfectly stable. The poles are as they were. The polymers have been compacted and now orbit the moon.’ She brought her hands together. ‘This planet’s ecosystem is in harmony once again. Our work is done.’

  The chambers were silent, but filled with smiles.

  ‘Now we face a choice,’ my mother went on. The resounding pitch of her voice is a little under 112Hz above my own, although its undertones are much deeper. It crackles in its upper register, and when it does it falls. Perhaps this is due to some kind of self-consciousness. I do not know. I like it.

  ‘Do we stay upon the planet we have repaired, or not?’

  There was the sound of hair and skin against fabric. Heads turning, left and right.

  ‘We cannot.’

  The words came from Benedikt, who stood near the edge of our circle. He is one of the oldest of my cousins, born several years before me. His voice has a deep timbre scattered with pulse waves, similar to a sound I had once heard when my balloon passed a flock of geese over the Arctic coast. Benedikt is a technology specialist, smaller than most, with sleek black hair and a thin crescent scar that follows the line of his left cheekbone. All eyes turned to him.

  ‘You speak with certainty, Benedikt,’ said my mother. ‘As usual.’

  Benedikt went to reply, but his father Caige had emerged from the council’s line. Caige is enormous. His face shone red in the candle light, and his belly bulged, belying his unusual fondness for wheat and mashed root vegetables.

  ‘That is because my son is certain, as we all must be. Physicality is crude and riddled with obstacles. There are far more efficient forms of existence.’

  ‘You refer to transcendence,’ said my mother.

  ‘Of course I do. We must depart: to stay would be lunacy.’

  THE PROBLEM WITH animals is that they do not think ahead. This is because their bodies know on some level that they will one day die, and therefore the future is somebody else’s problem.

  Even your species, who were at least born with the capacity to consider the future, only ever did so in speculation. You saw tomorrow as an imaginary thing, which is almost certainly why we are where we are.

  The erta do not speculate. We extrapolate, and one need only spend a little time on this planet to extrapolate from its freely given data the single courtesy it asks of its inhabitants: keep your footprints light, please.

  Do not multiply more than you can sustain, do not consume more than you need, do not create more than is necessary.

  This is why our population remains static, our food is simple, and our technology—though once immense for our purpose—is now meagre. Our dwellings are built from wood and stone; we use horses to cover distance; and what little power our settlements require is harnessed from the energy that flows freely through them. We do not build monstrous cities, or blast rockets into space, or seek out useless luxuries. The Halls of Gestation are quiet now, and the Halls of Necessity—where minor technological requirements such as screws, cups or fabric are discussed at length before being granted (or, more often than not, denied)—are rarely visited. Only the Halls of Reason are busy. Busy with voices, all eager to leave.

  So Caige was quite correct; to stay upon this planet would be an exercise in foolishness. We would live as slaves, bound by its terms. Millennia would pass and we would achieve nothing but the maintenance of our settlements and the nourishment of our bodies. Occasionally we would have to replenish the population—for all erta must die, albeit far in the future—but even this act would be folly, for one day the planet itself would succumb to its own death, at the hands of a bulbous sun or some other cosmic misadventure, and we would be gone forever.

  For what purpose would we live? None whatsoever. We had to leave, and transcendence was the only answer.

  I would like to explain transcendence to you, but I cannot. I am bound by the limits of human language, and there exists no combination of
words that can sufficiently describe it.

  I could invent some.

  I could even recycle some, for the mountains of words you abandoned over the centuries were almost a match for your landfills. We still use some to name those few pieces of technology we still use. Lanterns, for example. Lanterns are bright conglomerations of dense photon arrays, automated, fast and highly armed. Once employed to shepherd humans, they now patrol our perimeters. They also protect Oonagh, who lives in the mountains.

  Beacons too. These are small spheres which roam the atmosphere, monitoring the weather. And broth, a highly nutritious algae grown in lagoons, which we eat. Even our names, which we chose ourselves, are recycled.

  But no amount of recycled words would help you understand, so for now you will have to accept the simple truth that at some point, the erta will leave this planet, and our departure will not take the form of rockets hurtling through space, or imaginary portals, or death. We will still exist, just not in any form that you are capable of imagining.

  ‘THERE ARE SOME who would not leave so easily.’

  Caige turned. The words had come from Greye, a large, broad-shouldered erta whose genetic prototype was once common to a harsh swathe of barren land known as Siberia. He has a heavy beard and black eyes, and after Mother he is the council member to whom I am closest.