Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis by Mike Curry - Only when the last man died would the dim wastes of Asmarad be less lonely.

His name was Hrlec Brey. He was a big man, and he moved slowly as if he had all the time in the world.

And he had. He had all the time—years and years behind him, years and years ahead. And the world was his, its length and breadth, its skies and seas, the solitude of night, the loneliness of day.

He was eating dinner when the knowledge smashed across his mind: Tonight I am going to die.

He put down his leg of ayala and stared blankly at the plank wall across the room. That he was going to die did not disturb him. That he knew about it did. It was not whimsy that had crossed his mind. He was not given to idle speculation. It was as if a sense of precognition had suddenly developed in his intellect. It was a strange, irrevocable certainty.

His gaze fell on the half-eaten leg of ayala, and he shrugged. A crime to let it go to waste, impending death or not. He picked it up, moved his jaw slowly around the bone. So I'm going to die. Tomorrow I'll be free. Then his eyes hardened and his teeth tore savagely at the last bite of meat. I haven't evolved.

Moving slowly because the pains had been with him all day—he called them "pains" because there seemed no better word—he washed off the table and went out to the front porch of his small farmhouse on Ophiuchus VI to sit in the twilight and smoke his pipe. He was a man of fifty Earth years, whom age had weathered and work had bent, and the strongest thing about him was his will. He had willed to remain sane in his solitary world after the tragedy so many years before, and he had made it. Just made it. He did not even talk to himself.