I hate alligators. Bats, too, now that I think of it.
Polly's shack stood three feet above the water on cypress pilings. A ramp led down to a floating dock where another pirogue was tied up. This one sported a bright red paint job and looked much more seaworthy than Beaudreaux's. Maybe Polly could give me a ride back to town.
The dock shifted under me as I stepped from the boat and I almost fell in the water. Beaudreaux grabbed my arm, probably saving me from being stripped to the bone in ten seconds by ravenous piranha. I heard a screen door creak and then slam shut, and a hoarse female voice.
"Hey, Beaudreaux! Where dat bucket ecrevisses you gon' brought me?"
"You get you crawfish, ma p'tit, jus' soon as I cotched 'em." He laughed, and motored quietly into the darkness. I went up the ramp to a screened-in porch, where the woman was holding the door for me. She was gray-haired and stooped, wearing a long gingham dress with a daisy print. She waved gnarled hands around me as I hurried in the door.
"Vite, mon cher! Vite! Don't let the skeeters in."
The inner door was closed. Sort of an air lock for mosquitoes, I realized. I let myself through into a small, rustic room with a small fire blazing in the hearth, knitted rugs on the wood floor. The light came from two dim floor lamps with shades dripping tassels in lavender and gold and yellow. Hideous things, by themselves, but not bad in this context. I looked around for Polly, and the old lady spoke from behind me.
"I thought you'd never get here, cher," she said.
I don't know who I had thought she was. Being in a disney, I had probably pegged her as an authentic. Disneys are one of the places you can go to see "old" people, folks who look like humans did when age was pretty much synonymous with decay. Almost all of these are only old on the surface, with wrinkled sagging skin and gray hair and perhaps a "colorful" age-related bit of ghastliness like missing teeth, eyeglasses, arthritis. They limped, they doddered and tottered and feigned deafness, but under the epidermis they were as hale and hearty as I am.
To see "real" aging you generally had to go to a fundamentalist enclave of one type or another. They seldom visited the public corridors; they kept to themselves like the Amish.
Polly had joined such a sect shortly before her departure from Sparky and His Gang. I can't even remember the name; there are scores of them, all with different beliefs. Some go so far as to reject all medical treatment of any sort, and you hear of people dying horribly in their thirties and forties, even in their teens, though the authorities sometimes stepped in to stop that.
Polly's group was more moderate. They didn't reject all medical care, just that group of therapies usually called "long life." "Eternal life" by the optimists, though no one really believes a human can live for even a million years. But it's true we don't seem to be anywhere near the outer limits, and there are people well over two hundred years old now, thriving.
It was a sobering thought, though, to look at her and realize she was only a year older than I.
On the other hand, for a natural centenarian she was in pretty good shape. It's all relative, I guess.
"Don't ask how I'm doing," she said. "It would take all day. Never get old folks started on their aches and pains."
"All right, Polly," I said. "And I won't tell you how well you look."
She laughed, and I smiled, and suddenly I realized how good it was to see her again. I went to her and we embraced. She had shrunk several inches.
"Don't squeeze too hard, cher," she whispered. She didn't need to tell me that; she was brittle and dry. I could feel every bone.
I don't want to get into details of her appearance. The elderly share a suite of atrocities as they are battered by the tides of age. They erode in much the same way. Much of it has always seemed to me to be a struggle by the skeleton, the symbol of death, to emerge from its soft shell. The fat is blasted away, the skin grows loose, sags, becomes translucent. Soon you can see the skull beneath the skin. There's a morbid little computer program you can buy. Feed somebody's picture into it and it will age that person fifty, sixty, a hundred years. If you'd like to see Polly as I saw her, find a picture of her from the old show. She hasn't allowed herself to be photographed since then.
"Come on in, Sparky, mon ami." She took my hand and led me into a small kitchen. It looked like the only other room in the house. Her hand was cool and the joints were swollen.
She sat me down at a table with a red and white checkerboard cloth and poured strong coffee into a china cup and saucer. She eased herself into a chair facing me and let me take a sip.
"Now," she said. "Who is chasing you this time?"
Predictable? I don't suppose I can deny it.
I had not communicated with Polly in any way since the one telegram from Pluto. Several times I had been tempted, just a short message to be sure she really was going to hold the role for me. But I knew she would. Polly's word is unbreakable. So how did she know someone was chasing me? Consistency, I guess.
During my first twenty years on the run I had twice risked a trip back to Luna. Both times I had seen Polly—this before the effects of her medical fundamentalism had really begun to ravage her. And both times there had been those who urgently wanted to talk to me about this or that misunderstanding. I admit it, I have a talent for getting into these situations. But bear in mind, when you're on the run you find yourself having to do things you might not ordinarily do. I submit my clean record between my eighth and twenty-ninth years as evidence that I am not a fundamentally bad person. Luckily for me, my first eight years—for which, legally, I can't be held responsible—provided me the criminal skills I've needed for my last seventy.
So I told Polly about Isambard Comfort and the Demons of Charon. She listened, fascinated, and I wondered if she was thinking about how she would stage this epic tale of pursuit. Les Miserables, Part Two?
But during the telling I came to an uneasy realization, something I really hadn't considered before but probably should have. While the Charonese race was hot on my trail, those near me could be endangered. My failure to consider that had cost Poly dearly.
Polly reached across the table and patted my hand.
"Poor boy," she said. "You've had a terrible time of it. And you think this Comfort person will follow you to Luna?"
"I think we can count on it," I said, miserably. "And I have to think it would put you and the whole production in danger."
"We'll think on that, of course," she said. "But I don't see how it changes much. We were going to have to disguise your identity anyway. We'll just have to be more careful, that's all."
I thought it would be a lot more than just a matter of extra care, but I kept my mouth shut. She was aware of my situation, I had not tried to minimize it, and I felt that was all I was obligated to do.
"So who do you want to be this time?" she asked.
She meant what did I want to use as a stage name. Anywhere in the inner planets I didn't dare use my own name, or make any mention of my previous credits and career. Which was a damn shame, since Polly could make good use of Sparky's return after all these years. It would put butts in seats, as some producer once said.
"Do you have any idea how seriously they're looking for me?"
"I don't think they're looking for you at all, cher," she said. "But you can be sure that if they run across you—if, for instance, they see your name up in lights on The Rialto—they'll drop by with an arrest warrant."
She smiled as she said it, and I had to smile, too. So, as usual, I'd be playing an actor playing King Lear. Do you wonder why I'm not quite right in the head?