Free Going Grey by Karen Traviss Page B

of a sane person long enough to make something of his life. This wasn't a life. Life was the thing he saw on TV. Some of it looked as bad as Gran said it was, but the rest seemed to be the things he wanted, necessary human things – friends, interesting places, movie theatres, ball games, girls.
    Ian sometimes dared to think about going into Athel Ridge, getting a job, and making friends. But that wouldn't happen unless he could ignore his hallucinations. All he had to do was keep telling himself they weren't real, but if anyone looked at him too closely, he knew he'd wonder if they could see that he wasn't quite right in the head.
    They'll know I'm crazy. They'll smell it. People are still animals, deep down.
    "You feel like coming into town with me today, Ian?" Gran felt in her pockets. "I need to pick up some gentian spray for the sheep."
    Ian found it easier to venture into town in the winter. If he turned up his collar and pulled his beanie down tight, he didn't feel that people were staring at him. Summer was more of a challenge. He relied on sunglasses and a baseball cap. You could buy stuff without needing to say a word, and if you paid cash and got out of the store fast, nobody would even look at you. But today he felt like he had freak stamped on his forehead. He wanted to hide.
    "I think I'll check the fences," he said, instantly ashamed of chickening out. "Will you explain all the tax stuff to me one day?"
    Gran took the truck keys off the hook. "Sure. But it's all written out in the folder for when you need to do it yourself." The folder was almost a person in its own right, a battered manila thing bound with heavy four-way elastic bands that Gran said had come from a lawyer's office. She put her arms around him for a moment. "You're a good boy, Ian. I just wish I could give you a better life. This isn't much fun for a young guy."
    "I'm fine. Nobody could do more for me than you have." Ian had worked out years ago that his alternative with a feckless mother would have been life in an institution or worse. Gran had done what was best for him, however lonely he felt. "I know what would have happened to me if you hadn't been around."
    Gran swallowed hard. It always upset her, but he needed to talk about it. The older he got, the more it had grown into a vast, silent black cloud that neither of them could really discuss but that was gradually blocking every bit of light from his existence.
    "You're different, Ian," she said. "And humans don't like what's different. Animals are a lot more tolerant."
    "Is there something I don't know about myself? You'd tell me the truth, wouldn't you? It won't hurt me."
    She concentrated on her keys, examining them too carefully and blinking fast. That was her I-have-to-pick-my-words face.
    "I think you know yourself pretty well," she said. "You're very self-aware. Not many people are."
    "I meant would I know if I was crazy enough to be a danger to people. Do mad people know how sick they are?" Ian watched a lot of news. Sometimes he'd follow murder trials and wonder how serial killers saw the world, whether they knew just how weird they actually were or if they simply thought everyone else was abnormal. "Is that what you try not to tell me?"
    Gran shook her head a few times, more like she was trying to stop herself thinking about something than just saying no.
    "You're not a danger to anyone," she said. "They're a danger to you. I don't just mean all the assholes waiting to take advantage of you. I mean the do-gooders and government busy-bodies who'd think they knew what was best for you. But I'm going to get things sorted out for you, I promise. Now — key check."
    Gran treated a trip into Athel Ridge like being inserted into enemy territory, a country full of people with credit cards and all the other recorded, numbered, cross-checked, and monitored things that tethered their lives to the scrutiny of government and corporations. She always wanted to get in and out as fast as she