I saw Luthor as I stepped out of under the waterfall, just sitting there, absently watching some squabbling sparroes as the hopped betwee the son-drops and forget-me-nots that had begun to carpet the forest floor.

He turned suddenly, somehow aware that I'd noticed him. He smile, but sat still.

'Hello John!' he called over his shoulder as he turnded back to his quiet, considering delight of the newly sprung spring morning.

'How are you?'

'Well indeed, Luthor, well.'

I dried myself off with some clumps of gathered dried moss and rubbed the rich loam over my skin. It scratched and scraped like a pumice stone, or a dried loofer that I recalled using in a bathc, so many years ago now.

The dogs, Alpha and Omega, jumped up at my voice. Of course they could not have smelled, seen or even heard Luthor, for Luthor was not really there.

'Hush!' I chidded, 'Stay down dogs!' as I slipped into my leather tunic, so patched and quilted that I briefly wondered whether any of the original cow-skin was left. Rabbit, horse, pig and deer had fed the cloth down the years and the brown cured quilting helped to blend me among the trees and bushes of the forest deeps.

I shook my soaked hair, crumbled more earth among it todry, thicken and firm the shoulder length locks. Then snappeing my neck first back and then forward sending out a sharp spray of muddy water and twigs.

The dogs yelped, barked their annoyance briefly and then retreated a few feet from the pools edge before setlling back down unconcernedley. In the treesa magpie took to flight and the morning sunshine in the twisting leaves, the wake of its fury, gave a dappling to the surfce of the pool.

'Is it a ten-year already?' I shouted as I began to braid my hair before me.

'No John, no, as you well know' Luthor replied and he slowl turned, smiling, 'Good to see you John'.

'Should I sat the same to you oh gone one?' I laughed.

Luthor looked much as he always had. Sandy haired, piercing ice-blue eyes, wearing a simple tunic, the same features that he had worn when he had decided to go, when was it now? Perhaps twenty years ago. He was one of the last to go. There were, what, fifty odd of ius left when he decided to pass on. I was never sure whythe council had elected Luthor, among all of the billions of humanity, to visit me every ten year. True enough, I like him. Then again, I used to like most before they went.

'Why the earth John?' he called turning back to the spring carpet laid beneath his steady blue gaze.

I finished plaiting my braid and knotted it behind my head. I flung myself down besides him, breathing heavily. Alpha and Omega tracked my movements dully, Omeags snapping at an errant dragonfly but to no avail.

It was a fine morning.The waterfall above the rock-pool splashing happily onto and then gurgling away downstream. A slight breeze gently tickled the leaves of the forest and somewhere off a cuckoo was signalling the start of the explosion of life as the season swung at last from bitter winter into the promising spring.

'Scrubs the skin, covers my scent - wait until I rub some bear-spoor over me'

At this even Alpha and Omega seemed to wrinkle their noses in undisguised disgust. Aplha whined briefly before resting ehr head back on her paws, slowly closing her eyes as her nose tasted the gentle air.

"It's become that bad?' Luthor inquired.

"Ach, as if you didn't know,' I laughed and rubbed some rich mole dig over the parts I'd missed earlier.

'We don't track you you know John.' Luthor said, serious now.

'Really? I'm suprised.'

'We can always find you of course,' he continued, 'you are the last man on earth after all, easy to find, tyour heat signature is, well, unique'

'Aye, and the smell no doubt!' I chuckled and lay back, letting the mottled sunlight warm my skin now cooling from the evaporating spring water. 'How's the planet Luthor?'

And suddenly my mind flew back some thirty years............

'ORDER! ORDER!' The secretary of the World Council banged his gavel sharply. 'Let the minister present his case without interruption! I will allow a full question after he has been allowed to make his presentation!'

The calamour and noise eventually sbsided into a sullen, brooding murmur of discontent.

'Thankyou Madame Secretary,' said Ishmael, the senior Minister of the Environment for the World Council, as he stood up once again at the podium.

'My friends, do not shoot thte proverbial messenger. I am not offering here today either a personal view, a political view or a solution. The facts are readily available to all memebers of the council, and of course to all humans, from pole to pole. Churn the data yourselves, but we've run it through all climatical models and with the exception of the period, the conclusions, soberingly, concur.'

Ishmael paused, not for effect, personal gain had long been chase far from his mind, he simply knew what the reactioon would be, he just wanted a scant moment to gather himself, to say what had to be said.

'In short, Mother Earth is dying.'

The house exploded and once more pandemonium ruled with the outraged denial.

'Rubbish!'

Disbelief.

'The figures must be wrong!'

Anger.

'Resign!'

Ishmael simply stood the wash of opprobrium and waited, for he knew that silence would eventually come.

The secretary also seemed to understand that the gamut of emotions sweeping the members needed to be expressed, her gavel remaining untouched for this necessary moment.

Ten minutes later, after the house had settled into an uneasy bubbling truce of occasional cat-calls and whistles, Ishmael continued.

'You can rebut later, throught the usual channels and protocols. I understand the house and it's consternation...'

'HOW LONG!' Came a loud shout.

'YES! HOW LONG?' came an echo that grew to a clamour and then suddenly the whole house was on its feet, the chamber ringing with the same question, how long? How long until Mother Earth died Ishmael? How long have we got?

Ishmael fought back his tears, he hadn't expected this. Somehow he'd held a desperate hope that someone would challenge him, that he was wrong, that all the damned scientists and all the bloody models were wrong wrong wrong wrong wrong. In that moment of the houses howling fury, its echoing dmand, how long?, he suddenly understood that every damned member of the World Council has instinctively accepted the truth before them, had always known at heart, and that their denial was skin deep only.

For the furies had vistied all four corners of the earth, of some ten billion strong humans, with equal disregard and destruction. They knew. They might howl in protest like stubborn children, but they knew the truth before them.

Not if but when.

He could no longer hold the flood back.

Tears flew down his face, his body crumpled , his visage caved and the house saw his defeated, dreadful countenance.

Ishmael the warrior-poet, Ishmael the ancient, brave fighter that gave in to no man, Ishmael, the founder of the World Council, Ishmael the fearless and the incorruptible.

Defeated.

The house hushed now, as the gathered sense grew that the games were finally over. The truth had finally arrived, the verdict to be delivered before them.

Not if but when.

Shaking uncontrollably, Ishmael, now bent, hunched over the podium let his teaers run unchecked, there was no need to be strong right now, that would have to come later. He stuttered,

'Madame secretary, a moment if you will?'

She nodded and bought her gavel down, producing a pointless, hollow knock, for the entire house had grown to utter silence beneath the sight of Ishmaels collapse.

For a full few minutes not a word was uttered, during which Ishmael drew on an inner strength that he never knew he possessed. And yet, when he returned to the podium, his haunted eyes betrayed his newly gathered composure.

'How long?' his voice seemed so suddenly small, even to himself.

Then his voice grew, knowing the words that needed to be spoken.

'How long do we, the human have? Depending on which model you follow...' his voice cracked briefly like a snapped bone, but he pushed on, possibly the bravest thing that he had ever done in his entirely brave life.

'...depending on the model, we have, each and every one of us...' he gazed a gaze of infinite sadness that seemed to meet each and every members eyes at once.

'...we have between fifty and one hundred years.'