1 Youngish for Her Age PEGGY’S STORY I was 120 years old last birthday Which is a good age in some places though it’s not so much around 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 neighbor 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 1
sky run 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 neighbors from across the way are the only people I see around 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 neighbor 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 around You even feel you’ve done them an injustice somehow and you should have had the decency to predecease them 2
alex shearer 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 3
sky run 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 or the dark suntanned skin or 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 dark ened 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 4
