Uncle Martin got into the act, the Earth could have supported ten times the people than it does today.”
“Huh? There have been famines for the last ten years.”
“Figure it out. Every day the Earth receives three point five times ten to the eighteenth calories of solar energy, half of which reaches the surface. Now, if only one percent of the Earth’s surface was planted with crops that were only one percent efficient, you have fifty billion people on thirty-five hundred calories a day, enough to get fat on.
“Then figure that ten percent, not one percent, of the Earth’s surface is arable and that some natural plants are three percent efficient. We could feel one point five trillion people.”
“Then for God’s sake, why didn’t we?” Patricia asked.
“Because we never got our shit together. Uncle Martin blames it all on the ‘Big Shot Problem,’ the fact that people in power don’t like to change the status quo, but his views on social problems tend to be overly simplistic. You’d have to add in tradition, inertia, world trade agreements, greed, ignorance, and stupidity to get a complete answer. Mostly stupidity.”
Patricia finished her drink and looked up. Another group of refugees was just ahead.
Winnie was slowing down as Mona got up. “Just remember that you’re looking at the last famine in history.”
“Don’t get scared!” Winnie shouted in his little boy’s voice. “We’ve got food and water for you!”
Unbroken lines of LDUs, loaded with food and tree-house seeds, were still streaming out of the valley, heading north, to go through Alaska, swim the Bering Straits, and enter Asia, Europe, and Africa by way of Kamchatka. As many others were headed south, to try to alleviate the chaos in South America. Thousands more fanned out over the North American continent.
The Los Angeles zoo had been abandoned by its keepers, mostly because they simply couldn’t get from their homes to work.
Metal-eating larvae swarmed over cage bars and door hinges and the valves that kept the moats filled.
Gazelles, zebras, and mountain sheep hungrily, timidly, made their way out to the tall grass of untended lawns and munched contentedly.
Other animals were neither contented nor timid. Lions, tigers, and wolves, unfed for a week, quietly prowled about looking for warm meat.
The years they had spent in captivity had softened their muscles, and some hungry lions couldn’t catch a mountain goat, let alone a gazelle. Still, there was a lot of slow-moving meat around. The two-legged variety.
Antonio Biseglio was a chef, as his father and grandfather had been chefs. His kitchen was his kingdom and his kingdom was under siege.
With fly swatter and mallet, he had put up a noble, if useless, defense. In a week’s time his stove was worthless, his pots were like colanders, and his pans like sieves. In the end he salvaged nothing but a copper omelet pan, and with that he joined the crowds abandoning the city.
Tom Greene County Hospital was left with only one Filipino intern and a single nurse to care for the 230 surviving patients. The nurse, tired to the point of hallucination, dropped the buckets of water she was carrying and screamed as the LDU entered the stairwell.
“Don’t be afraid. I am a friend.”
“Wh—what are you?”
“I am Labor and Defense Unit Alpha 001256. My friends call me Tao.”
“Oh, yes. We heard that you—uh—folks would be out.” The nurse tiredly massaged her temples. “Look. Can you help me? We’ve got water in the basement, but the pipes to the other floors are out. People on the fourth floor are dying of thirst.”
“I’m afraid that there are more important considerations. The steel framework of this building is infested with larvae. It will collapse within three days. We must evacuate it immediately,” Tao said.
“But how? And where to?”
“I will organize a human labor force. The patients tell me that there is a doctor around. Find him, and together place all salvageable medical supplies into the hallways. I will have it hauled out to the courtyard, along with the patients.”
Relieved that someone—or something—was taking responsibility, the nurse said, “Yes, sir.”
Within an hour, using persuasion and offers of food, with threats and demonstrations of force, Tao collected a group of one hundred healthy men to assist him.
As they approached the hospital, they heard the nurse screaming from the second floor, where he found a Siberian tiger busily devouring the body of a woman who had been dying of cancer. The tiger viewed Tao’s appearance as a threat to its first meal in eight days. Roaring, it charged.
The tiger weighed seven-hundred pounds, more than twice that of the LDU, but in speed, intelligence, and ferocity, there was no contest. As the tiger leaped, Tao dropped below him. Thrusting a foot-long dagger-claw between the tiger’s swinging forepaws, he slit its throat to the spinal column. As the dead tiger hit the floor, Tao was already examining the patients in the room.
Both were dead.
The nurse entered as Tao was tying the tiger’s carcass upside down to the ceiling with Venetian blind cords.
“Oh, thank you, Tao. The patients—”
“Are both dead. I’ll attend to their bodies. You must care for the living. Get the men in the courtyard working. I want this building evacuated by evening. And send one of them, Antonio Biseglio, up here.”
“Yes, sir. What are you doing?” the nurse asked.
“We have three hundred hungry people here, and this carcass is protein edible for your species.” He had the tiger skinned and gutted, and was slicing the meat into one-inch cubes.
“But it’s a
“Protein. Look, they’re eating a rhinoceros in Griffith Park. Just tell people it’s beef. Now move!”
Antonio Biseglio arrived shortly. “You wanted me, boss?”
“I would prefer that you didn’t use honorifics on me. Except in emergencies, we LDUs maintain a subordinate role to humans.”
“Sorry, Tao.”
“Better. Now, people are hungry, you’re a cook, and this is meat. Do something,” Tao said as he worked.
“Cat meat?”
“The Watusi consider it a delicacy. Tell people it’s beef.”
“I don’t have any utensils.”
“I saw a four-foot Pyrex bell jar in one of the labs. It should serve as a cauldron. And there must be something salvageable in the kitchens. Get some men to help you. I’ll have the meat on stretchers in the hallway waiting for you. Move.”
All told, eight hundred pounds of meat went into the cauldron. And if some of it tasted like pork, no one mentioned it.
At the rim of a wide Colorado valley near the Continental Divide, Saber stopped to survey the terrain. Extending his tentacled eyes out until they were eight feet apart, he adjusted his vision to 20X magnification and slowly scanned the area in search of anyone who might need his help. Well above the tree line, all was lichen- covered boulders. A food tree was growing several thousand feet below, to his right. Saber noted the position for future use; in eight weeks it would start producing.
All seemed quiet, deserted, with no sign of human life at all.
No! On the opposite end of the valley, six miles away, he saw two humans, a man and a woman. They seemed to be struggling, although it was difficult to tell at this distance.
The woman broke away from the man, running away from him. The man pursued, tackling her, knocking
