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starve. That’s assuming that there wasn’t another rock fall down by Exit Falls, in which case we might all drown instead.
    Never mind drowning or starving from lack of food, though. I was going to starve inside my head long before that, or drown in boredom, if I couldn’t make something happen in the world, something different, something more than just this .
    That’s what I was thinking about; but Gerry, who loved me so dearly, he didn’t see all this going on inside me at all. He was happy happy. I put on a smile and that was enough for him. It was enough for everyone else too.
    Well, nearly everyone. Tina understood, and Jade could have seen I was faking it too, not because I was close to her – I wasn’t – but because I was like her. I was restless like she was. Restless and empty inside and hungry for something more than just ordinary things.
    And there was one other person too that saw what was really going on for me. It was Gerry’s little clawfoot brother Jeff, who shared a sleeping shelter with Jeff and me. He was only fourteen fifteen wombtimes old, not even a newhair, a weird little kid with a gentle face and great big eyes, like Gerry’s big gentle eyes, but with something completely different going on inside them. He’d been hobbling along after us ever since I got to Redlantern area, and it was only when we reached Circle Clearing and stopped by the edge of it that he finally got close enough to speak to me.
    ‘You’re sad, aren’t you, John?’ he said to me.
    I just shrugged, and stood there, and waited to be told when Oldest were ready to see me. And half of bloody Family stood there and waited with me.

     
    They were sitting side by side on the edge of Circle Clearing like three empty skin bags: Gela, Mitch and Stoop. Their backs were propped up against a big old whitelantern trunk with several layers of bark and a woollybuck hide wedged in between them and it to stop them getting burnt by its heat. And, like always, women were fussing round them with food and wraps and scoops of water.
    Beside Oldest was the hollow log in which they kept the Mementoes, and someone had opened it up for them and taken out the Model Sky-Boats, which Tommy Schneider, the father of all of us, is supposed to have made himself: the big starship Defiant , the little Landing Veekle, and the Police Veekle, in which Angela and Michael chased after Defiant when Tommy, Dixon and Mehmet tried to take it away from Earth. The three Models now lay at their feet, dark and shiny with the buckfat that had been rubbed into them for generations to stop the old wood from shrinking and cracking.
    But Oldest had got bored of the Models, and now they were arguing between themselves, while Caroline Brooklyn, the tall grey woman who was Family Head, squatted beside them and tried to soothe things down.
    ‘Each Any Virsry was supposed to be three hundred and sixty-five days after the last one,’ old Mitch was saying.
    ‘I know that, you stupid old man,’ said old Gela. ‘We all know that. But what I’m telling you, if you’d only bloody listen, is that you count the days all wrong.’
    ‘I’m sure we can come to an agreement,’ purred Caroline.
    ‘I don’t get them wrong, you lazy old woman,’ Mitch told Gela. ‘You just get behind in your count because your fat heart beats so slow and you sleep too much.’
    ‘Yes, she’s behind alright,’ said bent old Stoop, ‘but you’re behind as well, Mitch. You’re days and days behind the true time.’
    ‘No I’m not,’ said Mitch, ‘your heart beats way too fast, and it always has done. And anyway I’m oldest of Oldest, and you should listen to me. I’m a hundred and twenty years old, you know, and I’m closest to the beginning, and that means my wakings are the true days like they had back on Earth.’
    ‘Don’t talk rot,’ spat fat old Gela, ‘you’re just a muddled-up old …’
    Caroline laid her hand on Gela’s arm.
    ‘Here he is,’ Caroline said in that