Free Going Grey by Karen Traviss

Should we call it a day?"
    "I can't make that decision for you."
    "Just talk some sense to me."
    "Jesus, look at me. Forty going on sixteen."
    "What would you do?"
    Rob looked away at the kid playing with his toy soldier. "Okay, Livvie's stuck in that big empty house on her own, year in, year out, and when you're home she's on hormones that make her feel like shit. Just give the baby thing a break and focus on her. It's you who wants a kid most." Rob could be brutally frank and kind in the same breath. "You'll drive her away. Don't end up on your own like me. It's fucking grim. "
    Mike didn't know if it was what he wanted to hear or not, but it was what he needed to hear. His heart deflated slightly and he felt it would never be full again.
    Yes, it's me. Might as well face it.
    He tried to look away from the little boy. "You're right."
    "Think about adoption," Rob said. "You'd have to beat them off with a shitty stick. Even kids with families would run away from home to get a billet at Zombie Towers."
    Mike nodded. It felt painfully final, but it was easier to hear it from Rob. "I'd worry that it'd be like buying an accessory. Celeb style."
    "Not to the kid you give a home to. It'll be a lifeline. And you'll love them like your own flesh and blood, believe me."
    Rob had the ability to switch into profound mode in a heartbeat and pronounce universal truths. It was one of the things that made him so reassuring.
    "Come on." Mike put a tip on the table. "Let's go. I'm a weird bastard, aren't I? I'm sorry."
    Rob followed him out to the parking lot. "Zombie, humans always want more than they've got. If you've got everything money can buy, and you're smart, you're bound to want things that have meaning instead."
    He opened the car door to let the hot air out and start the aircon. Mike tried to imagine Rob forming any kind of friendship with some of the guys he'd known at school. Rob would probably have punched them out within five minutes and not felt remotely minimized by the experience.
    Before they drove away, the little boy with his GI Joe came out of the diner ahead of his dad and ran into the arms of a woman who'd just parked. Mike didn't need to know anything about them to put the story together. The little boy was the spitting image of his mom.
    But it didn't need to be that way, did it? Rob said so, and Rob was always right.
    DUNLOP RANCH, ATHEL RIDGE, WASHINGTON
JUNE.
    A FedEx truck trundled up the track, as exotic a visitor as a camel train as far as Ian was concerned. The ranch didn't get many deliveries. He watched from the barn as Gran signed for the package, which was probably more dollar bills.
    Last time the money had arrived by DHL, the time before that had been via UPS, and occasionally Gran went to the post office in Athel Ridge to collect it. Whoever sent the payments liked variety. Ian knew enough about the way the outside world ran to realise that things like pensions and donations didn't arrive that way, so while this was regular, it wasn't routine. Gran didn't trust banks. She was strictly cash-only.
    "Here, Ian." She sat at the kitchen table, counting banknotes like a teller and bundling them into small wads and rolls with elastic bands. "Stow this away."
    It was part of the emergency plan. Gran hid the cash around the ranch in case some disaster stopped them from accessing a central location. Ian had seen enough storms and forest fires on the news to understand how easy it was to lose everything you had in a matter of minutes, so it seemed like a reasonable precaution. He'd given up asking where it came from years ago. Gran said it was all legal, a regular gift from someone she'd done a very big favour.
    Well, she knew best. She'd raised him and he thought she'd done a good job. But he was eighteen, and he'd begun to accept that Gran was also getting older and wouldn't be around forever. He couldn't bring himself to talk to her about it. She was fit and well now, perfectly capable of looking after the