by Alex Shearer
Contents
Title Page
1: youngish for her age
2: private stash
3: first encounter
4: toll
5: cooking
6: sky-shark
7: the villa
8: martin again
9: war zone
10: new passenger
11: rat-skinning for beginners
12: angelica
13: a small, and unfortunate, explosion
14: motel
15: frozen dinners, chilled meals
16: troubling thoughts
17: game on
18: two halves
19: show me
20: friendly
21: maybe even too friendly
22: a morning after
23: city island, at last
24: gemma takes the wheel
25: by invitation
Copyright
1
youngish for her age
PEGGY’S STORY:
I was one hundred and twenty years old last birthday. Which is a good age in some places, though it’s not so much round here. But it’s no time of life to be looking after teenagers. I can tell you that.
I’ve got two of them. Not that they’re mine, not exactly. Indirectly though, I guess. They’re somehow related – great-grands, or great-great-grands, or several times removed, or I don’t know what. But anyhow, I got saddled with them.
That’s the thing about relatives, they can always track you down. At least they can when they want something. They’re not so hot on you tracking them down when you want something. They’re better at avoiding you then.
I’ve been farming this middle-of-nowhere rock for at least sixty years. My closest neighbour is over the way, on the next island. He’s near enough to shout at, and far enough away to ignore if I feel like it. Which I do. Frequently. And the feeling’s mutual.
But essentially, if there was a place called Nowhere, then this would be the middle of it. It’s not called the Outlying Settlements for nothing.
We’re so far off the Main Drift that we don’t get visitors from one turning to the next, except perhaps for the occasional Cloud Hunter. Sometimes I buy water from them, sometimes I don’t – I’ve got my own condenser here, but it’s old and not so reliable.
Those Cloud Hunters, and one or two of my neighbours from across the way, are the only people I see round here. And the locals are the same as me, mostly – old and crotchety. Though it’s fine here as long as you’ve got your health and teeth. But as soon as that goes, well, you’re gone with it.
My immediate neighbour, old Ben Harley over there, he’s not so much crotchety as cantankerous. But I know he’s looking out for me, same as I’m looking out for him – if only to have the pleasure of burying him first.
Other than that, I don’t get many callers. I was married once but he died and I decided not to try it twice. I had three children, but they went off into the world, and I moved here. I staked a claim on this piece of rock and no one contested it – probably because no one else wanted it – and I’ve been here ever since.
I’ve outlived everyone now – my daughters and my son. It’s a strange thing to outlive your children. It feels all topsy-turvy and the wrong, unnatural way round. You even feel you’ve done them an injustice somehow, and you should have had the decency to predecease them.
But then – as people are so fond of saying – whoever said life was fair? They say that so much I wonder if somebody did actually once say that life was fair, and it’s down to everyone else to disprove and contradict the statement.
So anyway, that’s how I go on, turning after turning. I grow fruit and vegetables in the greenhouse; I put the nets out to catch a few sky-fish. For company, I’ve got the sky-puss here – though he’s the next best thing to useless and all he does is eat – and I’ve got a sky-seal parked on the far side of the island. I didn’t invite him and he stinks. But I can’t seem to get rid of him, and even when I do, he just comes back again.
The island isn’t huge, but it’s home. It would take you a day to walk around it, if you weren’t rushing, so there’s room to stretch your legs. I’ve got solar panels for power and I can communicate over a reasonable distance with the cell phone, but that’s about it.
So here I am, when one day I spot a sky-boat heading in this direction. I didn’t think all that much about it, as people often pass by on their way to somewhere. It’s the stopper-offers we don’t get.
As the boat approaches, old sky-puss here actually bestirs himself and gets up onto his own six feet. (Don’t ask; it’s how they’re made.) They’re curious creatures, sky-cats, but bone idle. It takes something unusual or something exceptionally tasty to get them off their backsides.
My own boat’s tied up at the jetty there. It’s of the style known as a sky-runner – though sky-plodder might be more accurate, as it’s a workhorse, not a racer. It won’t take you anywhere fast, but it will get you there in the end – if it gets you there at all, and if it doesn’t, well, you probably won’t have missed much.
So, I wondered what was coming in that morning. It didn’t look like the mail boat – though it had been a while since I’d had a letter. But then I got a sight of the compressors and the scarred faces and the tattoos and I knew that it was a bunch of Cloud Hunters. But not just them, for they appeared to have two faces among them that didn’t bear those scars, nor the dark, suntanned skin, nor the various bangled adornments and badly advised piercings.
These two sore thumbs were pasty-faced and unhealthy-looking, like they’d spent too long in darkened rooms and not playing outside like you’re supposed to for the avoidance of rickets. And they were young, by the look of them, five or six, maybe seven at the most, a boy and a girl.
As the cloud-hunting boat drew near, I went and stood on a rock and called to them.
‘Got all the water I need right now, friend,’ I said. (It pays to be friendly out here, because you never know when you’re going to need one.) ‘Tanks are full and I won’t be requiring any for a while. Call again in another half-turning. I wouldn’t bother landing. Don’t want to waste your time.’
Usually that would have been enough, and those Cloud Hunters would have kept going. But not today.
‘We’re going to have to dock, Peggy,’ the man at the helm called over, and I knew him then, as I’d bought water from him a few times. His name was Kaleir, or something – they all have weird names like you never heard before; I think they spend the long, empty evenings making them up – and he had all the usual arm bracelets and face scars and tattoos, and three unnecessary earrings, where one would have done. But then, Cloud Hunters were never ones for understatement.
‘You got problems?’ I asked, as I watched the sky-boat sail in and prepared to throw him a rope.
‘Not more than the usual,’ he said. ‘I’ve got something for you though.’
‘And what’s that?’
But he didn’t answer.
They drifted in and he closed the sails and we tied the boat up at the jetty. As well as Kaleir there was a woman on board, plus their own two children, as well as the other two – who were pale as sheets in comparison. Last time I’d seen anything so wan-looking, it had been living under a boulder.
‘So where you headed?’ I asked, more for the sake of something to say than out of real interest.
‘Wherever the clouds are, Peggy,’ Kaleir said.
‘Well, they’re not round here.’
‘No, not yet, but the tracker says they’re coming.’
And he gesticulated with his thumb to a third individual, who was sitting on the deck, eating a plate of sky-shrimp with fast-moving chopsticks, and who had the distinction of being the only fat Cloud Hunter I had ever seen. Usua
lly they tend towards slim and athletic, but he was the exception to the rule. He had the bracelets; he had the scars; he had the tattoos. But he also had about forty kilos too much blubber. But maybe eating was his hobby.
‘So what can I do for you?’ I said, as they started coming down the walkway.
‘Tanuk, bring the children,’ Kaleir said, and the fat one stuck his chopsticks behind his ear – along with the toothpick already there – and shooed the two pasty-looking kids along, helping them gather up their belongings, of which there weren’t many.
‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘Just hold it there. I don’t know who gave you the idea that I was in the market for kids, but they told you wrong. I’m one hundred and twelve years old, and bringing kids up is one thing I’m done with for good. So thanks, but no thanks.’
‘No option, Peggy,’ Kaleir said. ‘I’ve been charged with delivering them to you, and here they are.’
‘Then you can put them right back on that cloud-hunting boat of yours and take them away again.’
By this time the two kids were walking up the jetty with the fat tracker waddling behind them. They looked a bit lost and apprehensive and I couldn’t blame them. If I’d been six years old and I’d suddenly met me, I’d be feeling apprehensive as well.
‘That’s far enough,’ I said. And I stood there, blocking the way.
‘Well,’ Kaleir said, ‘these two are for you, Peggy –’
‘Just told you,’ I said. ‘I don’t want them.’
He didn’t listen. Cloud Hunters don’t. Not when they’re averse to what they’re hearing.
‘And this is for you also,’ he said. ‘This comes with them.’
He handed me a bag, a kind of leather satchel. I opened it up and inside was some money in notes – a lot of money – and a letter.
‘What’s this?’
‘You’d better read it.’
‘Have you read it?’
‘I can’t read,’ Kaleir said, and without the slightest trace of embarrassment too, just matter-of-fact, the way somebody might have said ‘I can’t swim’, or ‘I can’t play the piano’, like it was no big commotion at all.
I took the letter and opened it up.
‘Dear Mrs Mackinley –’
Well, I resented that for a start. Mackinley died sixty years ago, and here people are, still calling me by his name. I told them round at City Hall that I was reverting to my own name, Piercey, but they never got the message or didn’t listen. Of course, the island with City Hall on it is several weeks’ sailing from here. It’s the capital. Biggest island, largest population.
Anyway, I won’t give you the whole blah-de-blah of the contents of the letter. It went on for several pages, and there were even further pages of supporting documentation, along with a family tree, lineage, various social security documents, copies of marriage, birth and death certificates, and the news that these two children in front of me had been orphaned by an unfortunate act of piracy on the high skies by persons unknown.
They had been found drifting on a life raft in the vicinity of the Isles of Night (which is a short cut you don’t want to be taking, not unless you’ve got a large harpoon gun or a couple of Cloud Hunters with you for protection). Their parents were missing, presumed dead. Extensive enquiries had been made throughout the islands and no other next of kin had been found.
So I’m standing there reading this, still blocking the jetty – which is starting to look a little crowded by now – and looking up at me are these two faces, which seem like they’re made out of unbaked dough, with raisin eyes full of both fear and suspicion and, strangely, a kind of innocent trust too.
Kaleir makes a move to walk around me and go on land.
‘Hold it right there,’ I say. ‘I’m still reading.’
‘Reading seems to take a long time,’ he says.
‘And thinking.’
‘What’s there to think about?’ Kaleir says. ‘You’re kin, aren’t you? So you take them and you look after them.’
‘I’ll judge that,’ I tell him.
To be honest, what I’m thinking to myself is that, first, I don’t know if I believe this story – supporting documentation or not; and second, even if it’s true, I’m so removed in lineage from these two kids, they might as well be strangers.
Not only do I not know them, I don’t even recognise the names of their parents. One of the names of the parents’ parents I half know. But that’s a pretty tenuous connection. But then, you see, that’s City Hall on City Island for you. If they can avoid spending a cent on welfare, they’ll do it. They fob off the needy on even the furthest away relative and they’ll say, just like Kaleir had, that you’re a blood relation, so it’s your problem.
‘Well?’ Kaleir says. ‘You letting us come on land so we can stretch our legs?’
‘And get something to eat, maybe –’ the tracker adds.
‘Hold on,’ I say. ‘Why don’t you have them?’
Kaleir looks at me and then at his wife and then back.
‘Us?’
‘Bring them up as Cloud Hunters,’ I say. ‘Why not? They’d look cute once you did the coming-of-age scars.’ At which one of the kids winced and the other looked disgusted.
But Kaleir shakes his head.
‘We can’t,’ he says. ‘No blood link. Can’t be.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I say. ‘I’ll even sign the paperwork agreeing to let you have them. And you can keep the money.’
He looks at his wife, then at the tracker. I know he’s tempted. Children are wealth to Cloud Hunters. I don’t know why, because kids are a big expense, who keep you awake nights, and they’re forever asking you how long it is until you get somewhere. But she shakes her head, as if to say it would be wrong.
‘It wouldn’t be right,’ he says, taking his cue from her. ‘They’re yours. They should be brought up your way.’
‘I don’t have a way,’ I say.
‘You’re a land-dweller, Peggy. We’re nomads.’
‘Makes no difference to me. So I’m telling you that either you take them and keep them, or you cart them back to where you found them.’
‘Can’t do that, Peggy.’
‘Oh yes you can. City Hall paid you to find me, didn’t they? So you just take them back and say I wasn’t at home, or I died, or my little island here got blown out of orbit and disappeared. You needn’t even make a special journey. Just drop them off next time you’re in the vicinity. No problem.’
And it wouldn’t have been. No problem at all. If the smaller of those two children – with their straw-coloured hair and their poor pasty faces – hadn’t looked up at me and said,
‘Granma, don’t you want us?’
And started to cry. And you know what he does then, just to add insult to personal injury? He reaches out with both his small arms, and he gets me round the legs, so I can’t even move or go a step away. While his sister stands next to him looking up at me too; but she’s dry-eyed and more kind of practical, less emotional, and a little older than he is.
‘Don’t cry, Martin,’ she says. ‘It’s OK. We’ve got each other.’
And so there I am – with it all so sweet and just as I like it on my little island, no responsibilities, no serious worries, just pleasing myself. But what do I do about this? There’s the small one got me round the legs, crying his heart out. And there’s his sister, about a year or eighteen months older I’m guessing, who’s all ready to go away again and to do her damnedest to make sure the two of them survive. So there you have it – the brave and the pitiful; the pleading and the defiant.
And, on top of all this, I’ve got the Cloud Hunters standing there looking at me, knowing that they’re all so tightly knit in the family department that they’d never turn anyone away, not if it was the most distant cousin in the distant cousin universe.
So what am I do to?
Well, to be straight, that’s what’s called a rhetorical question, as I’m not asking it for an answer, I’m just askin
g it for effect.
You know what I do. It’s that or you’re stupid. So I did it. And that was eight years ago. And it even worked out a whole lot better than I thought. But, as I say, that was eight years ago, and now I’m eight years older. I was only one hundred and twelve years back then, which was no age, but now I’m getting to be old bones. And they were younger too, cute kids, biddable, persuadable, amenable, even grateful. I was the old and wise one then. But now, everything I know, they know it.
Fact is, I’ve got two teenagers on my hands. Well, one teenager and one near teenager. And, somehow, I’ve got to get them to school.
My problem is how. You see, I chose this island on the assumption that once I got settled here I would never have to leave. But now I do.
I’ve got the school places all arranged. It’s boarding too. They can stay there until their education’s finished, if need be. And all free. The government will pay. It’s desperate for educated people now – thanks to past mistakes it made with that tight welfare budget. Only I have to get them there. That’s all.
That’s me, a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old, and my boat there, which is rickety and only just on the right side of sky-worthiness, and two kids, one of whom’s a full-time daydreamer, while the other thinks she knows everything, and she doesn’t have a clue yet about how little that is.
And separating us from the happy-ever-after promised land are a couple of thousand kilometres of wilderness, and some of the most pirate-infested, nutcase-infested, dangerous-creature-infested, weirdo-infested and crazy-infested ships, boats, sky and islands that you’ll ever see this side of the Main Drift. There are people out there who’ve been fighting each other so long they can’t recollect why they’re doing it, but they go on doing it anyway, if only from force of habit and lack of alternative occupation.